Wondering: The most popular Eiffel application

[Ulrich Windl]

Hi!

Wondering about the popularity or non-popularity of Eiffel I found three items:

1. Bundling the compiler with the OS: Part of C's popularity came from the fact that the compiler being bundled with the UNIX OS, so it was easily available

2. There was a lot of C source code available, too, and it was more attractive than FORTRAN (I had to learn that in the late 80ies)

3. There are some great free applications like NetHack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetHack) that invited people to "play and hack". AI still couldn't solve it. Maybe it's time to port that non-trivial app to Eiffel. It may catch more attention than any XML library, I guess, but it's really a great effort, and when AI should help in the job, it will cause significant global warming, I'm afraid 😉

So: What is the most popular Eiffel application apart from the compiler?

Have a nice weekend!
Ulrich

[Hubert Cater]

Just to plug myself a bit here, I've built PC games for over 20 years using Eiffel, turn based war historical strategy games covering the American Civil War, WWI, and WWII, with all of them now selling on Steam for just about the last 10 years.

Not necessarily the most popular, but real world applications with thousands of users/players for many years etc.

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/furysoftware

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[Eric Bezault]

This is great to have such software written in Eiffel. But
does anyone know outside of the Eiffel community that it is
written in Eiffel?

While we are talking about games, Louis developed an Eiffel
Game library some years ago:

https://github.com/tioui/eiffel_game_lib

with a Tetris clone using it:

https://github.com/tioui/Tetres

This software had been developed using EiffelStudio, and I
managed to compile it with the Gobo Eiffel compiler without
having to change any single line of code (neither in Eiffel
files nor in ECF files):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faF8p5Qnbeo&t=162s

This should reassure companies which are reluctant to adopt
a technology owned by a single vendor that thanks to the ECMA
Eiffel standard we can have several players supporting Eiffel,
with several Eiffel compilers. All open source, with different
licenses (GPL, MIT, Entreprise). And with several development
environments: EiffelStudio, dedicated to Eiffel; and a VS Code
extension, using LSP server itself written in Eiffel.

--
Eric Bezault <er...@gobosoft.com>
Eiffel expert - available for freelance work
https://www.gobosoft.com

On 03/07/2026 16:19, Hubert Cater wrote:
> Just to plug myself a bit here, I've built PC games for over 20 years
> using Eiffel, turn based war historical strategy games covering the
> American Civil War, WWI, and WWII, with all of them now selling on Steam
> for just about the last 10 years.
>
> Not necessarily the most popular, but real world applications with
> thousands of users/players for many years etc.
>

> https://store.steampowered.com/developer/furysoftware <https://
> store.steampowered.com/developer/furysoftware>

>
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2026 at 5:28 AM Ulrich Windl <u202...@gmail.com
> <mailto:u202...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> Wondering about the popularity or non-popularity of Eiffel I found
> three items:
>
> 1. Bundling the compiler with the OS: Part of C's popularity came
> from the fact that the compiler being bundled with the UNIX OS, so
> it was easily available
>
> 2. There was a lot of C source code available, too, and it was more
> attractive than FORTRAN (I had to learn that in the late 80ies)
>
> 3. There are some great free applications like NetHack (https://

> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetHack <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> NetHack>) that invited people to "play and hack". AI still couldn't

> solve it. Maybe it's time to port that non-trivial app to Eiffel. It
> may catch more attention than any XML library, I guess, but it's
> really a great effort, and when AI should help in the job, it will
> cause significant global warming, I'm afraid 😉
>
> So: What is the most popular Eiffel application apart from the compiler?
>
> Have a nice weekend!
> Ulrich
>
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[Hubert Cater]

Unfortunately no, in a big picture, general sense, I doubt very much anyone really knows these games have been developed using Eiffel.  From experience, the gamers who play them don't even really put any thought into which language was used in development either, just so long as they work and are playable.

In the earlier days, when I did more actively promote the use of Eiffel in the design, there were some players, who I would say were more technically aware of different programming languages, that had sent me some private messages, likely encouraged by the fact that Eiffel has been used, as perhaps they too had learned the language back in University as I had done, but I can't really think of a single example of this in the last 10 years or so.

These days the question of 'what programming language did you use?' doesn't even come up at all.

I looked at Louis library as well, we had communicated a few times as I too ended up using SDL as the main graphics library for the games, and now will use a full 3D library for my next game, all through Eiffel.

Real world wise, I can say I have found no limitations in using Eiffel, in fact the opposite, as in I have found it made developing these games, IMO. easier than if I were to have started with a different language.

It's unfortunate many others did not see it the same way.

[Alejandro Garcia]

Your games are very cool.

A "made with Eiffel' seal would be nice.

I would have never guessed you could make a game like that in Eiffel.

Alejandro García F. (elviejo)
https://elviejo79.github.io

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[Hubert Cater]

Thanks and I did actually have a Built with Eiffel label on the games for the first 15 years that would show in the Credits of the game.  The older games still show this to this day that are sold on Steam.

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