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From: giddy@astrix.trl.oz.au (David Giddy)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: Which OOPL is the best?
Message-ID: <7180@munnari.oz.au>
Date: 27 Mar 91 02:46:22 GMT
References: <1991Mar25.045952.813@agate.berkeley.edu> <jls.669956945@rutabaga> <1991Mar26.165615.6062@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
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In article <1991Mar26.165615.6062@watdragon.waterloo.edu>,
bamcpherson@lion.uwaterloo.ca (Brent McPherson) writes:

	[deleted]
> 
>     In reality, however, Eiffel is not very useful since there is only
>     one compiler (available from ISE) and it is only available on a limited
>     number of platforms).  Furthermore, the compiler [pre 2.2] was very slow
>     and did not produce very good code (possibly because of the intermediate
>     generation of C code and the fact that C compilers do not know about 
>     object-oriented programming and the unique optimization problems it 
>     presents).  Another problem with Eiffel was the high cost 
>     dynamic binding (and the fact there is no way to specify early-binding).
>     This results in slower, larger object code that cannot be
fine-tuned easily.
>     There is a post-processor that optimizes the C code produced by the
>     compiler (which can remove some unneccessary dynamic binding) but
>     this was buggy and added alot of extra overhead to compile times.
>     


I would like to bring Brent up to date on Eiffel as I believe that most of
his criticisms have now been addressed. 

 - Eiffel is available from ISE on nearly all the major UNIX platforms. 
 - Their current compiler (version 2.3) is much faster than previous compilers
   and is quite useable. The optimizer now works and produces code that is
   reasonably compact (for object oriented languages).
 - The Eiffel language is now in the public domain and controlled by an
   industry consortium.
 - A German company (SIG Computer GmbH) has announced a compiler for Eiffel
   on both UNIX and PC/DOS (announced at TOOLS Paris and CeBit in Hanover, but
   not yet released). Other PC and Mac versions are apparently under
development
   by other companies.

In this group I have seen people time and again say that Eiffel is the best
Object Oriented language currently available but then qualify the
statement with
reservations about it being single sourced and slow. 

These qualifiers have nothing to do with the language, only the implementation.

Now that Eiffel is in the public domain, why not support the language and
encourage other software houses to get behind it (listening Sun, Microsoft,
Borland,...??). 

How about a GNU version of Eiffel so that we can all try it out for free ?

Lets not be tied to C hacks for ever more ! (ducks for cover :-)

Regards,

David.

P.S: I am currently involved in a medium sized project using Eiffel.

Disclaimer: My opinions are not necessarily the opinions of my employer.
______________________________________________________________________________
David Giddy,			Voice: +61 3 541 6388	   Fax: +61 3 543 1944
Telecom Research Laboratories, P.O. Box 249, Clayton, Victoria 3168, AUSTRALIA
Internet: d.giddy@trl.oz.au
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