From: Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@...>
Date: 2006-10-18T06:01:53+09:00
Subject: Re: "Good Ideas, Through the Looking Glass"

On Oct 17, 2006, at 4:46 AM, Martin Coxall wrote:

> Morton:
>
>> IMO, Bertand Meyer and his colleagues are ones who have taken the
>> baton from Wirth and gone forward to develop a modern, elegant, and
>> fully object-oriented language from Pascal (via Ada) -- Eiffel. In
>> some ways, the antithesis of Ruby, Eiffel, because it so well
>> designed and because it is backed up with excellent libraries, is
>> also a very satisfying language to program in.
>>
>
> Maybe I'm mis-parsing that. Are you saying that Eiffel is the
> antithesis of Ruby because it is well-designed and has excellent
> libraries?

Absolutely not. The antithetic elements are strong variable typing,  
multiple inheritance, and emphasis on compile-time correctness. Good  
design and excellent libraries are attributes it has in common with  
Ruby.

My point, which I apparently didn't bring off, is that I believe good  
language design and good libraries are more important to delivering a  
satisfying programming experience than more idiomatic attributes such  
as dynamic/static variable typing or single/multiple inheritance models.

Regards, Morton