Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Eiffel and C++
Message-ID: <176@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 14 Mar 91 16:39:24 GMT
References: <39100@netnews.upenn.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 28

In article <39100@netnews.upenn.edu> alberto@grasp.cis.upenn.edu (Alberto Izaguirre) writes:
>Can someone tell me if Eiffel is better than C++.
>Or better can someone compare both of them.

Certainly :-)
C++ is better than Eiffel.
	oops, I meant Eiffel is better that C++ :-)

Really, this is a religious issue.  They are very different languages, with
different strengths and weaknesses.

Eiffel is an extremely pure OO language with little or now non-OO features.
In particular there are no free procedures, everything is a class method.
And all function calls are treated as message passing. Everything is an
object, the main 'built-in' type being a object handle.  Eiffel also has
much built-in support for compile-time and run-time code verification
and error handling.  (But the types of all objects are determined at run type).

C++ is an extremely flexible language, designed for relatively efficient
implementation.  It provides many choices to the programmer as to how
to make the tradeoff between performance and structure.  It provides more
in the way of static type checking and type safety, with most type
determination occuring at compile time.  In particular, C++ guarentees that
you cannot 'send a message' to an object that does not understand it (unless
you deliberately break the type system).
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)