Re: [GD-General] Eiffel

[Kent Q. <ken...@co...>]

Brian Hook wrote:
> (quick note: if you have an interest C++'s weaknesses, please check out
> Ian Joyner's fantabulous paper on the subject at:
> http://www.elj.com/cppcv3/ ).

Thanks for the link. I haven't finished it yet, but what I've read so
far is interesting, intelligent and well-reasoned (unlike most rants
about C++ or other languages).

> I won't bore you folks with my typical rant about how languages kinda
> suck, and development environments suck even worse, and how the two
> really need to be the same thing (yeah, I know, SmallTalk...), but
> instead I'll just ask: anyone here actually use Eiffel relatively
> recently for any projects, and if so, what did you think about it?

Can I attempt to summarize?

Some languages are good at expressing really powerful data abstractions:
I'd include most of the OO languages in this space, including C++, Java,
Smalltalk, Eiffel.

Some languages are good at expressing really powerful programming
abstractions, such as template programming, reflection, lambda calculus,
and the like. I'd include here C++, Smalltalk, Java, Python, Objective
Caml, Haskell.

Some languages are supported by a wide range of platforms and compilers.
Among these are C, C++, Java, Fortran, Perl, Python, and BASIC (although
the different versions of BASIC are so different that code is rarely
ported).

Some languages are known for good performance, particularly for
performance-sensitive environments. Among these are C, C++, Java, and
Fortran.

Some languages support an extensible, fast turnaround, high-performance
development environment. I'm going to define this to mean that if the
time from edit to running the edited code is more than a couple of
seconds, it's too long. I personally include Java in this list and
exclude C++, but YMMV.

Some languages have a broad base of support in a particular industry:
clearly C++, Java, Perl fit this mold.


So the question revolves around choosing a language that can meet your
needs for a particular project. The bigger the project, the larger the
team, the more likely you are to need such things as performance and
broad-based industry support.

I'd really rather work in some other language than C++. I spent a while
trying to use Smalltalk as a production language, and while I love it, I
came to the conclusion that at least at that time, it wasn't an
appropriate way to roll out a commercial product. 

C++ is by no means the perfect language. But it supports large-scale
programming, high-end data abstractions, and high-end code abstractions
(the STL is sheer brilliance, IMO, and while it's a bit more cumbersome
than I'd like, I don't want a language that doesn't support that kind of
programming).

And I've been looking around to see what else might work. I've used Java
for a lot of things recently, and there's a lot to like about it. But it
doesn't support the higher-level abstractions. I definitely want to look
into OCaml some more. 

But Eiffel seems a bit too much like a religion -- it's Pascal and
Modula-3 taken to the next step, and I have always found that school of
language design to be a bit too cumbersome. It's also single-source,
isn't it? I wouldn't mind being proven wrong -- but paying $2000-3000 to
find out seems a bit steep. Are there multiple implementations of
Eiffel?

	Kent


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