Eiffel's Future?
Jeremy
like a great language but many pages/projects are out of date or
abandoned. Even the NICE page hasn't been updated since early 2006?
Does it have a future?
Jeremy
Colin Paul Adams
Jeremy> I am just finding Eiffel and I am curious about it's
Jeremy> future? It seems like a great language but many
Jeremy> pages/projects are out of date or abandoned.
That applies to any subject you might care to name, I would think.
Jeremy> Even the NICE page hasn't been updated since early 2006?
I think NICE has been rather sidelined by the ISO standard.
Jeremy> Does it have a future?
Certainly it does.
--
Colin Adams
Preston Lancashire
llothar
Don't think so. It's a dead end.
The community killed themself.
Colin is one of the last lonley users working with gobos
eiffel compiler so his opinion is very biased.
llothar
Colin Paul Adams
llothar> Colin is one of the last lonley users working with gobos
llothar> eiffel compiler so his opinion is very biased.
I'm not lonely at all.
There are far too many people using Eiffel in the company I work for.
Marcus Lauster
> On 6 Apr., 05:20, Jeremy <jer...@nospam.cowgar.com> wrote:
>> I am just finding Eiffel and I am curious about it's future? It seems
>> like a great language but many pages/projects are out of date or
>> abandoned. Even the NICE page hasn't been updated since early 2006?
>>
>> Does it have a future?
>
>
> Don't think so. It's a dead end.
>
> The community killed themself.
I can't believe that's the only reason. There has to be more.
J
active projects.
And also http://dev.eiffel.com/ for the opensource EiffelStudio.
And then follow the various links.
No the community is not dead, and I am not working with Colin neither ;)
llothar
> You can check http://origo.ethz.ch/for
> active projects.
I just had a look at origio. What the fuck?
Look at the projects, this seems to have a lot of clones
"http://hexabang.origo.ethz.ch/" but i was not able to find any
real project at all. Just fucking lies.
The forum has also only a handfull of postings during a year.
Unbelievable.
llothar
> > The community killed themself.
>
> I can't believe that's the only reason. There has to be more.
You have no idea what the community did for insane things.
This was indeed enough.
And that we now only have one serious compiler (sorry gec is
a complete toy program and will be for many more years) which is
extremely expensive is not making it easier.
Yes they have a GPL version but that does not help.
If you want a user base you also need a free for commerical compiler.
Visual Eiffel is dead and SmartEiffel is not an Eiffel anymore.
Georg Bauhaus
> And that we now only have one serious compiler (...) which is
> extremely expensive is not making it easier.
AFAICT, it is priced just like any complete language toolset
that comes with a support contract.
> Yes they have a GPL version but that does not help.
> If you want a user base you also need a free for commerical compiler.
Do you mean, an Eiffel tools user base with necessraily smaller
scale business plans?
Marcus Lauster
>>> The community killed themself.
>> I can't believe that's the only reason. There has to be more.
>
> You have no idea what the community did for insane things.
> This was indeed enough.
Tell me more it sounds very interesting. I'm not that old and discovered
Eiffel just few months ago.
llothar
bug.bauh...@maps.futureapps.de> wrote:
> llothar wrote:
> > And that we now only have one serious compiler (...) which is
> > extremely expensive is not making it easier.
>
> AFAICT, it is priced just like any complete language toolset
> that comes with a support contract.
Well i don't want a support contract. And if i develop for three or
four systems
i don't want to purchase an IDE and support contract for four systems.
Just the
compiler for 3 of them an one IDE.
And the times where you can take 5000$ for a compiler are ower. You
can but if
you do you have a total niche. And thats where Eiffel is now.
Open your eyes man. This is not a speculative argument, i describe
reality.
> > Yes they have a GPL version but that does not help.
> > If you want a user base you also need a free for commerical compiler.
>
> Do you mean, an Eiffel tools user base with necessraily smaller
> scale business plans?
Smaller business plans or just a secondary solution for smaller
inhouse stuff
and simple tools. Even larger companies have such requirements. And
with this
price tag you have to walk through one or two controller offices to
get it approved.
Without a larger community Eiffel has a hard time as libraries are
today much more
important then a nice language. Like it or not but that is the fact.
Open your eyes man. Unbelievable that there are still people out there
that are
impossible to do a post mortem analysis.
Friedrich Dominicus
>> > The community killed themself.
>>
>> I can't believe that's the only reason. There has to be more.
>
> You have no idea what the community did for insane things.
> This was indeed enough.
Well it would be nice what to know what you'd understand under the
community. I can not see the Eiffel users having playes havoc with it
but well those providing the "base functionality"
>
> And that we now only have one serious compiler (sorry gec is
> a complete toy program and will be for many more years) which is
> extremely expensive is not making it easier.
Hm, that seems to be enough for me.
>
> Yes they have a GPL version but that does not help.
> If you want a user base you also need a free for commerical
> compiler.
Why?
> Visual Eiffel is dead
You can still try to "revive it from"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/visualeiffel/
> and SmartEiffel is not an Eiffel anymore.
Well I guess the SmartEiffel developers will disagree, and tell you
that they have the only true Eiffel.....
But Lothar has some very good points. But for that one just have to
look through the SmartEiffel mailing list, this newsgroup and then
youŽll got an idea
Regards
Friedrich
--
Please remove just-for-news- to reply via e-mail.
Friedrich Dominicus
I suggest following the remarks from Eric Bezault in this group and
then you should check the mailing list of the Eiffel vendors.
Then it would be a good idea to read into Eiffel the language and
what ECMA Eiffel is about. Then you can check back this group from a
few years or so ago, and you can try to find those having used Eiffel
heavily to that time and try to re-find them.
llothar
> >> I can't believe that's the only reason. There has to be more.
>
> > You have no idea what the community did for insane things.
> > This was indeed enough.
>
> Well it would be nice what to know what you'd understand under the
> community. I can not see the Eiffel users having playes havoc with it
> but well those providing the "base functionality"
Do you remember Uwe Sander and his wife? They tried hard to give
SmallEiffel
a GUI framework to make it useable for applications in there company.
But Mr. Colnet and his team didn't care about it. They pissed on all
the users,
changed there compiler and breaked backward compatibility every two
months. Just
with the argument i like this better then the other (And they had
always very
questionable changes about what is better).
Always telling us that it is his research project and he don't care
about
anything them himself and his Loria friends.
After Uwe was pissed off enough he left and Greg C and others who
worked on ELK's
gave up, because the Sanders were the workhorse of the project.
I don't know about ISE and VE because they had never a public
community. Seems there was
just a little bit Gobo which is Eric's project and was opened IMHO
after it was already
too late.
> You can still try to "revive it from"http://sourceforge.net/projects/visualeiffel/
I could do a lot. If somebody decide to pay my living (please a little
bit over social
wellfare level). Without this it is just one more '0' and '1' sequence
in the digital
garbage dump called sourceforge.
Putting it under a BSD license would have given it a little more
chance. But the attitude
to dump it and make sure that nobody else can ever make money with it
(aka GPL'ed it) makes
me not even to think about it.
> > and SmartEiffel is not an Eiffel anymore.
>
> Well I guess the SmartEiffel developers will disagree, and tell you
> that they have the only true Eiffel.....
Yes, unfortunately i'm pretty sure that you are right here.
Eric Bezault
> I don't know about ISE and VE because they had never a public
> community.
Perhaps that's why your opinion about Eiffel differs from
those who are part of this not-so-public community but
nevertheless make a living out of Eiffel and are willing
to use it for another decade or two. For those people
I'm sure that the future of Eiffel is not so dead.
So I guess that the difference of opinion is about what
is a dead language and what is not. For sure Eiffel is
not a mainstream language. But it has never been, and
it didn't prevent people from making good use of it.
--
Eric Bezault
mailto:er...@gobosoft.com
http://www.gobosoft.com
Georg Bauhaus
> Open your eyes man. This is not a speculative argument, i describe
> reality.
I won't deny that yours is certainly a legitimate
reality and that the number of copies of your editor
sold does not warrant a supported copy of
ISE's toolset. Right?
For sure, I have heard about ASP.NET job requirements
where either VB or C# is in informal requirement.
Java and LAMP are ubiquituous in their respective
markets.
But this is nowhere near a complete picture of the
programming labor market. Like you have said, a
profitable business does not necessarily need the masses.
Some profitable businesses are intrinsically oriented
towards smaller groups of buyers. These businesses have
no need for loud public advertising. That might even be
counterproductive.
>>> Yes they have a GPL version but that does not help.
>>> If you want a user base you also need a free for commerical compiler.
>> Do you mean, an Eiffel tools user base with necessraily smaller
>> scale business plans?
>
> Smaller business plans or just a secondary solution for smaller
> inhouse stuff
> and simple tools.
GPL proper is not in the way of writing inhouse stuff. In case ISE's
GPLed inhouse stuff generates profit, then likey sending some of
the profit to ISE (or some GPL project?) will be in order, I'd say.
> Even larger companies have such requirements. And
> with this
> price tag you have to walk through one or two controller offices to
> get it approved.
I don't think that car makers, banks, insurance companies
etc. have much of a problem with licensing cost; compare licensing
cost to typical wages in backend programming (ACID SQL,
J2EE, non-junk hard read-time controller software, ...)
then the mentioned $$$$ will not make much of a difference.
In fact, how much is VS PRO with MSDN *per* *year* and
seat? I understand this is the most widespread IDE used
even in frontend programming.
I'm mentioning hard real-time because there you hear the same
arguments about dead languages and then some. What you call
expensive (and what _is_ expensive for many self-employed or
semi-employed programmers) is a normal price for compilers
and tools when it comes to writing programs that control
the brakes of vehicles, robot arms, measurement instruments
and such.
> Without a larger community Eiffel has a hard time as libraries are
> today much more
> important then a nice language. Like it or not but that is the fact.
No need to stress the lack of scripting libraries, but certainly
some missing libraries is not an "insane thing"?
The lack is probably not a problem on .NET either,
because .NET _is_ a type library. Eiffel and .NET are well
integrated, Eiffel# being among the first .NET languages
(not surprisingly).
> Unbelievable that there are still people out there
> that are
> impossible to do a post mortem analysis.
IIRC, I just remember seeing a recent photograph of an Eiffel
compiler vendor holding his young daughter and standing
in front of a nice house. Would you think they are in trouble?
You know, some people their language is dead...
Georg Bauhaus
> Open your eyes man. This is not a speculative argument, i describe
> reality.
I don't deny that yours is certainly a legitimate
reality. Perhaps the number of copies of your editor
sold does not warrant a supported copy of ISE's toolset.
Could that be right?
And for sure, not just once have I heard about ASP.NET job
requirements where either VB or C# is in informally wanted,
not anything else. Java and LAMP are ubiquituous in their
respective markets.
But this is nowhere near a complete picture of the
programming labor market. Like you have said, a
profitable business does not necessarily need the masses.
Some profitable businesses are intrinsically oriented
towards smaller groups of buyers. They must! These businesses
have no need for loud public advertising. That might even be
counterproductive.
>>> Yes they have a GPL version but that does not help.
>>> If you want a user base you also need a free for commerical compiler.
>> Do you mean, an Eiffel tools user base with necessraily smaller
>> scale business plans?
>
> Smaller business plans or just a secondary solution for smaller
> inhouse stuff
> and simple tools.
GPL proper is not in the way of writing inhouse stuff. In case ISE's
GPLed inhouse stuff generates profit, then likey sending some of
the profit to ISE (or some GPL project?) will be in order, I'd say.
> Even larger companies have such requirements. And
> with this
> price tag you have to walk through one or two controller offices to
> get it approved.
I don't think that car makers, banks, insurance companies, hardware
designers etc. have much of a problem with licensing cost;
compare licensing cost to typical wages in backend programming
(ACID SQL, J2EE, non-junk hard read-time controller software, ...).
If you see the sums then the mentioned $$$$ will not make much
of a difference.
In fact, how much is VS PRO with MSDN *per* *year* and
seat? I understand this is the most widespread IDE used
when writing MS Windows software.
I'm mentioning hard real-time because there you hear the same
arguments about dead languages and then some. What you call
expensive (and what _is_ expensive for many self-employed or
semi-employed programmers) is a normal price for compilers
and tools when it comes to writing programs that control
the brakes of vehicles, robot arms, measurement instruments
and such.
> Without a larger community Eiffel has a hard time as libraries are
> today much more
> important then a nice language. Like it or not but that is the fact.
No need to stress the lack of scripting libraries. But how
are some missing libraries an "insane thing"?
A lack of libraries is probably not a problem on .NET either,
because .NET _is_ a type library. Eiffel and .NET are well
integrated, Eiffel# being among the first .NET languages
(Uhm, not surprisingly).
> Unbelievable that there are still people out there
> that are
> impossible to do a post mortem analysis.
IIRC, I have just seen a recent photograph of an Eiffel
compiler vendor holding his young daughter and standing
in front of a nice house. Would you think they are in trouble?
You know, because some people their language is dead...
Colin LeMahieu
Georg Bauhaus
> Open your eyes man. This is not a speculative argument, i describe
> reality.
I don't deny that yours is certainly a legitimate reality.
Perhaps the number of copies of your editor sold does not
warrant supported copies of ISE's toolsets. Could that be right?
> Smaller business plans or just a secondary solution for smaller
> inhouse stuff
> and simple tools.
GPL Eiffel is not in the way of writing inhouse stuff. In case
inhouse stuff derived from GPLed Eiffel generates profit, then
likely sending some of the profit to ISE (or some GPL project?)
will be in order. At least this is what I think.
> Even larger companies have such requirements. And
> with this
> price tag you have to walk through one or two controller offices to
> get it approved.
I don't think that car makers, banks, insurance companies, hardware
designers etc. have much of a problem with licensing cost;
in a few cases I know there is no such problem. The argument is
obvious: Compare licensing cost to typical wages payed for this
kind of programming (ACID SQL, J2EE, non-junk hard read-time
controller software, ...).
If you imagine the yearly pay plus the cost of a workplace
then the mentioned $$$$ will not make much of a difference.
In fact, how much is VS PRO with MSDN *per* *year* and
seat? I understand this is the most widespread IDE used
when writing MS Windows software.
I'm mentioning hard real-time because there you hear the same
arguments about dead languages and then some. What you call
expensive (and a number of $$$$ tools *is* expensive for many
self-employed or semi-employed programmers) is a normal price
for compilers and tools when it comes to writing programs that
control the brakes of vehicles, robot arms, measurement
instruments and such.
> Without a larger community Eiffel has a hard time as libraries are
> today much more
> important then a nice language. Like it or not but that is the fact.
There is a need for scripting libraries if you want to replace
Python with Eiffel, say. But how are some missing libraries an
"insane thing"?
A lack of libraries is probably not a problem on .NET either,
because .NET is a type library. Eiffel and .NET are well
integrated, Eiffel# being among the first .NET languages,
not surprisingly.
If you look at libraries this way then using C# you won't
get libraries as well, assuming a Mac, say.
> Unbelievable that there are still people out there
> that are
> impossible to do a post mortem analysis.
From what I hear and see, ISE will be needed for years
to come. Now that William Gates is offering Windows using
humanitarian attitudes as a clever vehicle, supporting Eiffel
on .NET for non-glue programming work looks like one financially
viable business plan to me. Maybe this plan would be incompatible
with your business, and probably others' businesses.
Still, I don't see how this sad circumstance could kill Eiffel,
and its existing market.
Friedrich Dominicus
> Most of the discussion is on
>
> http://eiffelstudio.origo.ethz.ch/forum
>
> and
>
> http://groups.eiffel.com/
Then we do have a clear definition what Eiffel is it's ISE's Eiffel.
and we have another clear definitin at:
http://websympa.loria.fr/wwsympa
So that seems to be an "intersting" future.
Friedrich Dominicus
>>
>> >> I can't believe that's the only reason. There has to be more.
>>
>> > You have no idea what the community did for insane things.
>> > This was indeed enough.
>>
>> Well it would be nice what to know what you'd understand under the
>> community. I can not see the Eiffel users having playes havoc with it
>> but well those providing the "base functionality"
>
>
> Do you remember Uwe Sander and his wife? They tried hard to give
> SmallEiffel
> a GUI framework to make it useable for applications in there company.
>
> But Mr. Colnet and his team didn't care about it. They pissed on all
> the users,
> changed there compiler and breaked backward compatibility every two
> months. Just
> with the argument i like this better then the other (And they had
> always very
> questionable changes about what is better).
Well I do not have to check that but it does now show why the users
have broken it, you wrote Uwe wants to make a GUI toolkit but the base
tools was changed which broke their code. So what have this "users"
done to break Eiffel?
I'm quite aware about the way backward-compatiblity was treated. We
have seen it also. We once had added Eiffel support to our IDE and it
was to that time the only one I can remember which was able to debug
SmallEiffel on Windows. But that has not last very long....
>
> Always telling us that it is his research project and he don't care
> about
> anything them himself and his Loria friends.
>
> After Uwe was pissed off enough he left and Greg C and others who
> worked on ELK's
> gave up, because the Sanders were the workhorse of the project.
Again I can not see why the users have broken Eiffel. It's very easy
if the tools you use change in a backward-incompatible way you just
can keep up some time. And you just can keep up, with anything if you
get enough money out of your product.
So for me it seems, the problem is that there never was a market for
in Eiffel written tools. Well I just can say that Bertrand Meyer has
quite another opinion on how Eiffel could have changed that.
Howerver it seems that this is just another point in which one does
not just have to query Eiffel for it's values but what OO really
gives us. And for me this reflects back to Eiffel also. Till 2000
Eiffel has virtually no support for anything else but objects.
There was no abstraction which has existed since the 1950ies, the use
of functions. If you wanted that in Eiffel pre 2000 you simple did not
get it. Howerver the Smalltalkers got that right from the
beginning. They have the blocks which are extermly useful for
"functional abstraction"
And Eiffel could not deny that, I just propose to find anything about
blocks, function etc in Eiffel the langauge II or even Object oriented
software construction 2 nd Edition.
It was simply not there. Then there were things which were written
down in ETL II which never had worked in any Eiffel ever on the
market.
But then suddenly everythin has changed. They could not deny the
usefulness of functions any longer and invented "agents", and from
there on Eiffel as Language was history. Not because that was a bad
move but because not every Eiffel has got them. And well too all
Eiffelists before ETL II was the "standard Eiffel" but we do not have
this Standard any longer. We have a family of Eiffels which do work
differently have different tool support and without GOBO it would be
a hell of work to get some stuff portable between Sma(ll,rt)Eiffel and
ISE-Eiffel.
>
> I don't know about ISE and VE because they had never a public
> community. Seems there was
> just a little bit Gobo which is Eric's project and was opened IMHO
> after it was already
> too late.
It was never a problem to modify GOBO to your liking. We've done that,
and I just can say GOBO is one of the most excellent tools I ever
found in the computer business. The library just "works". And if
nothing else from Eiffel ever will be remembered. I for my part think
that the libraries were the best ever developed. And they are the
easiest to understand IMHO.
>
>> You can still try to "revive it from"http://sourceforge.net/projects/visualeiffel/
>
> I could do a lot. If somebody decide to pay my living (please a little
> bit over social
> wellfare level). Without this it is just one more '0' and '1' sequence
> in the digital
> garbage dump called sourceforge.
Well yes you can see it that way. I just can tell we had tried to get
some decent Eiffel and wanted to pay for it. But it was not enough,
and so it vanished completly.
>
> Putting it under a BSD license would have given it a little more
> chance. But the attitude
> to dump it and make sure that nobody else can ever make money with it
> (aka GPL'ed it) makes
> me not even to think about it.
Well I'm not in the mood to discuss the "merits" of the GPL. I just
can see that the market for "development tools" on the most used PC
operating systems (Windows, Linux) has simply vanished. We once had a
flouring industry and people were willing to pay for tools and so they
got choices. today it is reduced to more or less
MSVC, Eclipse, gcc, gdb.
And the tool situaion on commercial unices is even worse (hard to
believe but try to get a decent IDE running under AIX). The things the
Unix vendors have tried have just vanished (who the hell knows why it
is named KDE?)
>
>
>> > and SmartEiffel is not an Eiffel anymore.
>>
>> Well I guess the SmartEiffel developers will disagree, and tell you
>> that they have the only true Eiffel.....
>
> Yes, unfortunately i'm pretty sure that you are right here.
Well one of the biggest problems we had and have is that (but that's
true for other languages also) is that the market was and is small but
the competition harder then nearly everywhere else. And so man decades
were spend on parallel development. All the Eiffel vendors could have
spared a lot of money, while helping there users developing portable
libraries. But neither side has grant the other side much good will.
And here we are....
llothar
solutions.de> wrote:
> Well I do not have to check that but it does now show why the users
> have broken it, you wrote Uwe wants to make a GUI toolkit but the base
> tools was changed which broke their code. So what have this "users"
> done to break Eiffel?
Well the problem was always that Colnet had a fellowship or users
(mostly
current or former students) and that users were putting to less
attention to the
situation. There was also no pressure from users/customers to force
the
developer into a direction (well at least not officially - i'm not
sure why
Meyer turned 180° in his opinions - maybe there was a lot behind the
scenes).
I can only tell about the developments in the cost-free eiffel world
at these
days. And there wasn't any communication. I remember this crazy
russian guy
who rewrote the FOX GUI library tens of thousands of lines before
asking about
this project on either the FOX or the Eiffel lists.
No coordination and absolutely no focus on what's important.
For example getting a fucking "seek" and "tell" into the library of
Mr. Crazy
Colnets Compiler.
And spending a year or so to define the STRING class on NICE. Help,
Monsters
from a brainless planet took over earth or at least some parts of
France.
> there on Eiffel as Language was history. Not because that was a bad
> move but because not every Eiffel has got them. And well too all
> Eiffelists before ETL II was the "standard Eiffel" but we do not have
> this Standard any longer.
Plus the agent chapter from ETL III was badly written and so
SmartEiffel Agents
are still different from ISE Eiffel ones. Well the other vendors? You
know
that Visual Eiffel and Halstenbach died in this days, so hard to say
but
all Eiffel Systems (both of them) had agents.
> found in the computer business. The library just "works". And if
> nothing else from Eiffel ever will be remembered. I for my part think
> that the libraries were the best ever developed. And they are the
> easiest to understand IMHO.
Sure but it is an extremely small library. It still is. Look at the
standart
libraries of all projects. Where are POP3, SMTP, IMAP where Report/PDF
generation,
GUI, Databases, Statistiks, Networking, Crypto....
You see: Gobo was never more then a better standard library. It still
is not really
much more plus a few tools plus XML and a non useable memory eating
XSLT.
(By the way XML/XSLT hype is over).
> got choices. today it is reduced to more or less
> MSVC, Eclipse, gcc, gdb.
Well you forget NetBeans. But then we are really close to what is
there.
> And the tool situaion on commercial unices is even worse (hard to
> believe but try to get a decent IDE running under AIX). The things the
> Unix vendors have tried have just vanished (who the hell knows why it
> is named KDE?)
Yes. But the whole situation on commerical unices is worse. Not just
the
tool situation. With 50000 AIX installations worldwide you can't do
anything great.
We can discuss how this come.
[ ] Is it a consequence of the technical
brilliance of C++/Java/C# and Eclipse/Netbeans?
[x] Is it the consequence of free software that kills competition
and lead to cost free monopolized markets?
[ ] Is it because tool development is so expensive that
there is no other way?
Friedrich Dominicus
>
> I can only tell about the developments in the cost-free eiffel world
> at these
> days. And there wasn't any communication. I remember this crazy
> russian guy
> who rewrote the FOX GUI library tens of thousands of lines before
> asking about
> this project on either the FOX or the Eiffel lists.
Well how many C programmer have asked some C vendor. I bet this
weren't much. And so this guys have acted as usual (and which had and
works for C) they sat down and wrote software. So I can not see how
they have done anything for harming Eiffel
>
>> got choices. today it is reduced to more or less
>> MSVC, Eclipse, gcc, gdb.
>
> Well you forget NetBeans. But then we are really close to what is
> there.
>
>> And the tool situaion on commercial unices is even worse (hard to
>> believe but try to get a decent IDE running under AIX). The things the
>> Unix vendors have tried have just vanished (who the hell knows why it
>> is named KDE?)
>
> Yes. But the whole situation on commerical unices is worse. Not just
> the
> tool situation. With 50000 AIX installations worldwide you can't do
> anything great.
Depend on the users accessing one machine. Those are not Personal so
at least a few users should be there and well if I look at CATIA then
I just can say, amazingly.....
>
> We can discuss how this come.
>
> [ ] Is it a consequence of the technical
> brilliance of C++/Java/C# and Eclipse/Netbeans?
x of course it is ;-)
>
> [x] Is it the consequence of free software that kills competition
> and lead to cost free monopolized markets?
there is always a cost, and some are paying for it.
And if one sees who drives the development than I'd argue that are
those willing and able to spend on "programmers". Those have surely
good reasons to support development. Be it just to be unkind to other
in the IT-area ;-)
The other really big players in the language development areas are
universities. They can afford spending years on such things, they have
cheap programmers, and a funding and as long as they get enouhg papers
out of the development they are quite fine. Does anyone bet
that Haskell or Ocaml would be that good without such funding?
>
> [ ] Is it because tool development is so expensive that
> there is no other way?
Well tool development is expensive and you either have to ask for a
high price to cover your costs or you have to sell large
quantities. It seems that most people are very happy with the state of
the tools and if we look over our "programmer" lenses then we have to
see that we're a minority and every year more we get less and less in
comparison to the "users". The time where everyone getting hands to a
computer has been a hacker are gone. And so the tools for development are getting less
and less important.
I doubt if some has the choise of spending their time with computers
they prefer nearly everything else but programming. I bet for most
users people doing programming are exotic at best and dangerous or
incompetent usually. (hey this ..... program does not work....) ....
Eiffel still has it's merits, but the others have taken over. Just see
on how active the D area is..... and indeed D is a nice thing, but it
still lacks any decent IDE. I'd argue that we are better placed in it
if we look at ISE. That's quite a nice thing...., browsing and
debuggin is kind of fun in it ;-). Well SmartEiffel has nothing
compared to that but it still has DBC ;-)..
I'm not that critical. Eiffel will be of high value to just a few, and
the software written in it will still exist and those using it will
always see it's advantages....
Happy eiffeling
llothar
> at least a few users should be there and well if I look at CATIA then
> I just can say, amazingly.....
CATIA 5 is now almost a windows program (well i runs on solaris and
maybe
other unices but thats not a priority anymore).
> > [ ] Is it a consequence of the technical
> > brilliance of C++/Java/C# and Eclipse/Netbeans?
>
> x of course it is ;-)
I know you liked this. Specially the C++ part.
> The other really big players in the language development areas are
> universities. They can afford spending years on such things, they have
> cheap programmers, and a funding and as long as they get enouhg papers
> out of the development they are quite fine. Does anyone bet
> that Haskell or Ocaml would be that good without such funding?
Yes. But i'm still waiting for somebody who has tried to write a large
competitive
program in this langauges. A few years back (before i started hacking
SmallEiffel)
i asked for a real world program with multithreading, network, GUI and
at least
400.000 LOC of code (to see if the compiler can handle it). There was
nothing even
close to it. The largest Ocaml was 50000 LOC. That doesn't say
anything about the
quality of the compiler (i learned it the hard was with SmallEiffel).
So i don't bite here. Universities are by definition good for research
(at least they
should) but are they able to implement good development tools? I don't
believe it.
I haven't seen it.
> Well tool development is expensive and you either have to ask for a
> high price to cover your costs or you have to sell large
> quantities. It seems that most people are very happy with the state of
> the tools
Are they? Isn't it that reality is just disappointing enough so that
people
do not for more at the moment. I hear they screaming. Especially when
it
comes to Cell-XBox games and multithreading programming. Nobody is
satisfied
in this area, because for many use cases the traditional tools do not
really help here (using multithreading in games is much harder then
using
it to speed up a Ruby on Rails webserver).
> and if we look over our "programmer" lenses then we have to
> see that we're a minority and every year more we get less and less in
> comparison to the "users". The time where everyone getting hands to a
> computer has been a hacker are gone. And so the tools for development are getting less
> and less important.
Sure but there have never been so much "programmers" in the world.
Almost in every family you have at least one website owner. And the
chance
that he had at least a look at PHP source code is high.
> I doubt if some has the choise of spending their time with computers
> they prefer nearly everything else but programming. I bet for most
> users people doing programming are exotic at best and dangerous or
> incompetent usually. (hey this ..... program does not work....) ....
For me people who do sports or work on there cars or guys who spend
half of
there life hunting down ladies in the local disco are strange. So
what?
It's not that strange and it's not lossing ground.
> I'm not that critical. Eiffel will be of high value to just a few, and
> the software written in it will still exist and those using it will
> always see it's advantages....
Sure, maybe i stay for many years with my eiffel dialect (i hope i
can).
But this was not the question of this thread. The question is if there
is a
future. This hits the question what is a dead language? Everyone has
it's own
definition. Mine is that only a language that has many new
developments,
new projects and is able to keep up with new technologies (Eiffel for
Cell CPU's).
I'm not looking at it in the way of an individuell living being but
with a view
on the species itself. And there i don't see a future. It's like
mankind in the
movie "Children of men" there everything is also still alive but
without future.
Eiffel is dead, the Eiffelists are just to busy programming to realize
it.
Eric Bezault
> Eiffel is dead, the Eiffelists are just to busy programming to realize
> it.
The first time I was told that Eiffel was dead was in 1996.
Since then I worked for 3 different companies, all using
Eiffel. Yes, I might be too busy programming, and I'm happy
to do so ... especially using this dead language named Eiffel.
Georg Bauhaus
> Universities are by definition good for research
> (at least they
> should) but are they able to implement good development tools? I don't
> believe it.
> I haven't seen it.
SmartEiffel development does not seem to be driven by a large
commercial user base, ok. OTOH, the Monash University Eiffel
compiler is well known here ;-). Another commercially successful
university toolset is the GNU NYU Ada Translator, also known as
GNAT. So it might depend on who is working at the resp. university.
> Nobody is
> satisfied
> in this area, because for many use cases the traditional tools do not
> really help here (using multithreading in games is much harder then
> using
> it to speed up a Ruby on Rails webserver).
The _really_ traditional tools seem to be a lot more helpful
than the newer ones, such as C, C++, Scheme, and the like;
I mean, Simula, Algol 68, HPF, ... all know about parallel
hardware and many CPUs.
> The question is if there
> is a
> future. This hits the question what is a dead language? Everyone has
> it's own
> definition. Mine is that only a language that has many new
> developments,
> new projects and is able to keep up with new technologies (Eiffel for
> Cell CPU's).
> I'm not looking at it in the way of an individuell living being but
> with a view
> on the species itself. And there i don't see a future. It's like
> mankind in the
> movie "Children of men" there everything is also still alive but
> without future.
Well, then everyone missing the one big party is probably with
the dead, be they rich or not. How is the editor business these days?
Friedrich Dominicus
>
> So i don't bite here. Universities are by definition good for research
> (at least they
> should) but are they able to implement good development tools? I don't
> believe it.
"higher" quality side, and especially in Ocaml they really spend much
time on useful tools and even wrote some debugger. They just come a
bit short if we're looking at integrated development environments...
ISE-Eiffel does run circle around them in this area IMHO:
But if we come do development tools. The Smalltalker do have nice
things and the stress their integrationess, unfortunatly they forget
to include really decent editor ;-). But if it comes to browsing or
debugging they are quite good.
> I haven't seen it.
Well I disagree
>
>> Well tool development is expensive and you either have to ask for a
>> high price to cover your costs or you have to sell large
>> quantities. It seems that most people are very happy with the state of
>> the tools
>
> Are they? Isn't it that reality is just disappointing enough so that
> people
> do not for more at the moment. I hear they screaming. Especially when
> it
> comes to Cell-XBox games and multithreading programming. Nobody is
> satisfied
> in this area, because for many use cases the traditional tools do not
> really help here (using multithreading in games is much harder then
> using
> it to speed up a Ruby on Rails webserver).
They may scream and the may curse but they still do development. The
tools are maybe lacking it does not matter as long as people just
wrote software with it. Maybe they would buy something but as I've
learned if there is an alternative to pay for or free. Then people
will spend more time on the free stuff than paying for anything, YMMV
of course.
> Sure but there have never been so much "programmers" in the world.
> Almost in every family you have at least one website owner. And the
> chance
> that he had at least a look at PHP source code is high.
Well yes but for PHP the tools are probably good enough....
>
> For me people who do sports or work on there cars or guys who spend
> half of
> there life hunting down ladies in the local disco are strange. So
> what?
> It's not that strange and it's not lossing ground.
In comparison to the whole user base yes. It's getting less and less
important, you can get an application in nearly every area. Even we as
programmers just use many tools. I do not do programming my
Webclient. I'm jus using it. And so the people are looking for things
which they are interested in and then the most of the time find
anything suitable. That's enough for many. And if we come back to
programming, there are excellent choices one can make (without any
special order)
1) Eclipse for Java
2) gcc and gdb on Unices be it with or without GUI (have I wrote ddd
;-)
3) thouands others, many cross-platform. I just invite you to check
out (in no particular order) LispWorks, AllegroCL, Ocaml, Ruby,
Python, Perl, Tcl/Tk, Realbasic, Squeak, Cincoms Smalltalk,
OpenWatcom, DrScheme, Eiffel, C, C++, D, SBCL, CLisp and so on and so
on.
>
> Eiffel is dead, the Eiffelists are just to busy programming to realize
> it.
Well as long as anyone is still developing it is it not dead in my
point of view. If development fully stops then there is some end, I
for my part see e.g Sather as dead.
No new software will be written in it and no one works on enhancing
it. Eiffel in comparison is very alive. We may not like where it's
heading but fact is, development in and with Eiffel still takes
place. Even new software is written in it and at least on two tools
development takes place. As long as we look over GPLed software the
Eiffel tools are free and with all respect to other IDEs, the ISE
Eiffel IDE is among the best IMHO.
The libraries are of high quality so you really can count on it. I
even dare to say that the IDEs in C are not that good (especially on
Unices) and if it comes to support for "commercial Unices" then I'd
argue people having to developt there are among the "hardest", vi some
tools with a command line and printf ;-(
It's amazing what they've done with such tools.
so have nice day eiffel-hacking
Ulrich Windl
> I am just finding Eiffel and I am curious about it's future? It seems
> like a great language but many pages/projects are out of date or
> abandoned. Even the NICE page hasn't been updated since early 2006?
>
> Does it have a future?
One any company has a great compiler and library, the future will be great!
The libraries out there aren't that bad, but the compilers... ;-)
Regards,
Ulrich
>
> Jeremy