Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!hub!eiffel!sarkela From: sarkela@eiffel.UUCP (John Sarkela) Newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel Subject: Re: Basic info Summary: Basic info supplied. Message-ID: <210@eiffel.UUCP> Date: 15 Nov 89 17:29:35 GMT References: <1944@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> Organization: Interactive Software Engineering, Santa Barbara CA Lines: 86 >Typical outsider's questions... >What hardware/OS platforms does Eiffel run on? Eiffel runs on a wide range of unix platforms. Among these are the 386 unix operating systems, Apollo workstations, all of the Sun platforms, Vaxen running Ultrix, DecStations running Ultrix, DG AViiON, MIPS platforms, Sequent Symmetry, SGI Iris, mainframes running UTS, etc. This list is not exhaustive, and ports to new platforms running something which resembles SystemV or BSD 4.x tend to be trivial. >Roughly what is the cost? The cost of the Eiffel environment is indexed by the power of the platform for which it is purchased, and ranges depending on the number of libraries of objects purchased with the environment. Educational institutions qualify for educational discounts if Eiffel is to be used for research and education. For further information write or call ISE. >How steep is the learning curve? Assume a good programmer but naive in >the intricacies of OOP. Eiffel has a very small learning curve. The base constructs of the language are fundamentally Algol-like. The number of keywords is roughly commensurate with that of Pascal. The language has an LL(1) grammar. There is precisely one syntactic construct for each semantic form. Thus, declaration of a reference could never be misconstrued to be an application of the address-of operator. Further, because Eiffel is a pure object oriented language, the programmer can only express computation in terms of objects. Where functional programming is appropriate, Eiffel endeavours to make it as easy as possible to link to functional languages such as C. Conclusion, the learning curve to be surmounted in Eiffel is that of the object oriented paradigm. >Is Eiffel a single vendor product? Currently, only Interactive Software Engineering sells Eiffel. A complete reference manual for the language and environment will be sold by Prentice-Hall in 1990, a pre-print version is available from ISE for $45 US. This manual provides descriptions of the syntax and semantics of the language, as well as discussions of the environment as currently implemented by ISE. Outside parties are encouraged to develop Eiffel interpreters and compilers. The only restriction is that language developers must acknowledge that Eiffel is a trademark of Interactive Software Engineering. >Is it a pre-processor or a compiler? How good? Eiffel is most certainly a compiler, or if you prefer, a translator. The Eiffel compiler produces a portable subset of C as its output for reasons of portability. The Eiffel compiler does not recognize nor does it accept any grammatical constructs of the C language. The compiler performs dependency analysis on compilation units and does minimal incremental recompilation. Makefiles are not required. The optimizer will remove unreferenced code from classes, statically bind all routines which are not subject to polymorphism, and will inline routines subject to internal compiler metrics. The runtime provides support for concurrent garbage collection, assertion monitoring and exception handling. Snail Mail: Interactive Software Engineering 270 Storke Road, Suite 7 Goleta, CA 93117 USA Email: queries@eiffel.com Phone: (805) 685-1006 Standard Disclaimers: Unix is a trademark of AT&T, and is an adjective describing operating systems. Eiffel is a trademark of ISE, and a really nifty tower in Paris. Any opinions expressed herein are my own and nobody else's. -- sarkela@eiffel.com -- uunet!eiffel!sarkela