The language is dynamically (and strongly) typed and comes with a rich and extensible type system out of box. It provides an extensive support for the functional programming paradigm including but not limited to - first class functions, first class currying and composition, list/array comprehensions, pattern matching, polymorphic variants, thunks, etc. It also provides some imperative programming features.

Ela supports both strict and non-strict evaluation but is strict by default.

The current language implementation is a light-weight and efficient interpreter written fully in C#. The interpreter was designed to be embeddable and has a clear and straightforward API. The language comes with a command line utility (Ela Console) that supports interactive mode.