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Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!pyrltd!tetrauk!rick
From: rick@tetrauk.UUCP (Rick Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.eiffel
Subject: Re: A Hard Problem for Static Type Systems
Message-ID: <1143@tetrauk.UUCP>
Date: 26 Apr 91 13:17:59 GMT
References: <1991Apr20.010347.28984@leland.Stanford.EDU> <1991Apr23.152110.6500@eua.ericsson.se> <1991Apr24.144714.17740@cl.cam.ac.uk>
Reply-To: rick@tetrauk.UUCP (Rick Jones)
Organization: Tetra Ltd., Maidenhead, UK
Lines: 23

In article <1991Apr24.144714.17740@cl.cam.ac.uk> pwd@cl.cam.ac.uk (Peter Dickman) writes:
> [ ... ]  Sadly Eiffel has inheritance & unconstrained genericity but the 
>constrained genericity was left out (I don't like Bertrand Meyer's 
>justification for this I'm afraid - but accept that he had his reasons). 

Just to correct a misunderstanding, Eiffel DOES have constrained genericity.
This was introduced in version 2.2 of the language (released about 18 months
ago).  Dr. Meyer has revised a few of the opinions he expressed in his book
OOSC since it was first published, and Eiffel has evolved as a result.  It does
mean that OOSC is out of date as far as a true definition of the language is
concerned.

On this subject, the book "Eiffel: the Language" is due for publication very
soon, and will define version 3 of the language.  This addresses many issues,
large and small, which have been found in practice by users of the language,
and should prove very interesting reading for anyone concerned with programming
languages.

-- 
Rick Jones, Tetra Ltd.  Maidenhead, Berks, UK
rick@tetrauk.uucp

Any fool can provide a solution - the problem is to understand the problem