From: "Mauricio Fernández" <batsman.geo@...>
Date: 2002-08-23T01:45:38+09:00
Subject: Re: A Repeat: New Language After Ruby?

On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 11:40:10AM +0900, Bambang Purnomosidi D. P. wrote:
> William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote:
> 
> >I am sorry that there have been so many responses; it is very hard to
> >decide what to do.  Can I make the boundary more clear?  The new language
> >should satisfy all the following criteria:
> >
> >1) Age
> >2) User Base
> >3) C/C++ and Java Interface
> >4) Library
> >5) Syntax
> >6) (Optional) Execution and Memory Performance
> 
> [sorry for delete some portion of text]
> 
> Eiffel, anybody?
> 

Bertrand Meyer writes about it in OOSC:

-----
  In addition, the language is straightforward and includes very little
else than direct support for the method. First-year students using it
have commented that it was "no language at all" --- meaning that the
notation is in one-to-one correspondence with the method: to learn one
is to learn the other, and there is scant extra linguistic decoration on
top of the concepts. (...)

  What counts is the simplicity of the notation and how directly it maps
to the concepts. If you understand object technology, you almost know it
already.
---

As I see it, Eiffel is kinda like "crystallized statically typed object
orientation with design by contract". It's probably too close to Ruby in
its roots (if we omit their differences in typing), and learning it
won't broaden the way you think much. Ummm, following that line of
thought, maybe I should dismiss Smalltalk. But then again, its syntax
and environment are strange enough for me to consider it :-)

Eiffel is for sure a nice language to work with, but I do believe we'd
learn more by doing a complete paradigm shift rather than staying on the
OO side.

Maybe I'm too biased towards _learning_ instead of _actually working_
but that's because I am still a student :-)

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