Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!haven!umbc3!menkar!bruce From: bruce@menkar.gsfc.nasa.gov (Bruce Mount 572-8408) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: problems/risks due to programming language Summary: Holy Wars/Discussion is good Message-ID: <2913@umbc3.UMBC.EDU> Date: 5 Mar 90 22:39:26 GMT References: <6960@internal.Apple.COM| Sender: newspost@umbc3.UMBC.EDU Reply-To: bruce@atria.gsfc.nasa.gov (Bruce Mount 572-8408) Followup-To: comp.software-eng Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Lines: 47 At the risk of losing my anonymity, I'm jumping feet first into the Eiffel Jihad. Along with working full time as a contractor to NASA, I am the teaching assistant for the "Object Oriented Programming" class at the nearby University of Maryland. Dr. Meyer's contribution to computer science by designing Eiffel is tremendous. Eiffel is the most elegant OOP language available today. It's elegance allows the programmer to easily understand the entire language in a short period of time while giving them unmatched control via assertions and sensible exception handling. This is, of course, my opinion, but one that can be supported by numerous rigorous arguments. In my (limited) personal experience, every single person I know that has access to both Eiffel and C++ uses Eiffel. However, my opinions about Eiffel are not the point. Rather, I would like to discuss Dr. Meyer's attitude. Dr. Meyer has the quite normal feeling that his language is the best OOP available. If he didn't feel that there were problems with C++, Objective-C, etc. he wouldn't have designed Eiffel in the first place. I'm sure that Brad Cox and Bjarne Stroustrup have similar feeling about their languages. The difference, however, is that Dr. Meyer has the courage of his convictions to debate them in public. People who read comp.lang.eiffel regularly see posting from Dr. Meyer debating various aspects of the language. These are, in fact, *debates* NOT arguments, and I have seen Dr. Meyer post articles several times that said "Ignore my previous posting, I was wrong and John Doe was right". I have heard stories from OOPSLA that Bjarne Stroustrup refused to sit on the same panel with Dr. Meyer because Dr. Meyer was too critical of C++. I have heard this story from several different sources, but I still hope that it is not true. If OOPSLA is not the correct place to debate the various languages then where is? The fact that Dr. Meyer feels strongly about the OOP paradigm can only be helpful to the entire field. Dr. Meyer generally makes his points in a clear, rigorous, manner. People from all religions (C++, Objective-C,...) should try to listen to his points with an ear towards how they could apply his ideas to their languages. I would be delighted to listen to Brad Cox or Bjarne Stroustrup, it only they would participate in network discussions. -Bruce ================================================= | Bruce Mount "Brevity is best" | | bruce@atria.gsfc.nasa.gov | =================================================