book

Masterminds of Programming

by Federico Biancuzzi, Chromatic

March 2009

Intermediate to advanced

496 pages

18h 40m

English

O'Reilly Media, Inc.

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Organization of the MaterialConventions Used in This BookHow to Contact UsSafari® Books Online
Design DecisionsUsing the LanguageOOP and ConcurrencyFutureTeaching
The Pythonic WayThe Good ProgrammerMultiple PythonsExpedients and Experience
Paper and PencilElementary PrinciplesParallelismLegacy
The Forth Language and Language DesignHardwareApplication Design
The Goals Behind BASICCompiler DesignLanguage and Programming PracticeLanguage DesignWork Goals
The Life of AlgorithmsLanguage DesignUnix and Its CultureThe Role of DocumentationComputer ScienceBreeding Little LanguagesDesigning a New LanguageLegacy CultureTransformative TechnologiesBits That Change the UniverseTheory and PracticeWaiting for a BreakthroughProgramming by Example
The Power of ScriptingExperienceLanguage Design

A Functional TeamTrajectory of Functional ProgrammingThe Haskell LanguageSpreading (Functional) EducationFormalism and Evolution
The Soundness of TheoremsThe Theory of MeaningBeyond Informatics
A Seminal PaperThe LanguageFeedback and EvolutionXQuery and XML
Engineering Objective-CGrowing a LanguageEducation and TrainingProject Management and Legacy SoftwareObjective-C and Other LanguagesComponents, Sand, and BricksQuality As an Economic PhenomenonEducation
Power or SimplicityA Matter of TasteConcurrencyDesigning a LanguageFeedback Loop
Language and DesignGrowing a LanguageC#The Future of Computer Science
Learning and TeachingThe Role of the PeopleUMLKnowledgeBe Ready for ChangeUsing UMLLayers and LanguagesA Bit of ReusabilitySymmetric RelationshipsUMLLanguage DesignTraining DevelopersCreativity, Refinement, and Patterns
The Language of RevolutionsLanguageCommunityEvolution and Revolution
Designed to LastResearch and EducationInterfaces to LongevityStandard Wishes
An Inspired AfternoonReusability and GenericityProofreading LanguagesManaging Growth and Evolution

Content preview from Masterminds of Programming

Chapter 17. Eiffel

Eiffel is an object-oriented programming language designed primarily by Bertrand Meyer in 1985, now managed by a standards committee at Ecma International, which produced an ISO standard released in 2006. It provides a wide range of features now considered modern and widespread: garbage collection, generic programming, and type safety. Its most important contribution may be the idea of Design by Contract, where the language enforces interface preconditions, postconditions, and invariants; this improves the reliability and reusability of components. Eiffel’s influence is apparent in languages such as Java, Ruby, and C#.

An Inspired Afternoon

Why did you choose to create a programming language?

Bertrand Meyer: Very few people create a programming language just for the sake of it. Eiffel was born out of a necessity. I designed a programming language because I needed to write software and everything I had was unsatisfactory.

Did you need a tool to, for example, implement Design by Contract?

Bertrand: That part was obvious, but in general I needed an object-oriented language. Let me give you the context. We started a company in 1985, Interactive Software Engineering. It is now called Eiffel Software. We were actually going to build software-engineering tools. We were funded by a Japanese company to build a program editor, or a syntax-directed editor, which we did build and which enjoyed moderate success.

This was a very small company. I was still teaching at the University ...