This is Eiffel-and-the-NeXT in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 19-Dec-1989 22:48:25 From: g2k@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Frederic Giacometti) Subject: Eiffel and the NeXT Marry NeXT and Eiffel ? I love my NeXT and understand that nostalgics of the MacII be worried. Also, I do not really see the point of debating on the comparaison between the two machines. Does anyone compare a Che- vy to a Ford Taurus ? We are going to start a long-term development project in CADCAM and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing. Since high degrees of in- teractivity, abstraction, and flexibility are required, and that we are engineers before being programmers (as engineers, our interrest is to reduce the need for development programmers, and make sure that the software is of good quality), the NeXT and OOP seem self-imposed. I am concious of the conditions in 1985 when NeXT choose Objective-C to support its environment; at that time Obj-C was probably the best product available. However since, things in the world of OOP have become better defined and more structured. Obj-C and C++ have always looked more like bricolage kits than anything really serious; Smalltalk is definitively han- dicapped by its lack of structure, incompatibility and ineffi- ciency. Fortunately, out of the dim, B. Meyer and its team have finally presented something one step ahead of anything else. As computer manufacturers feel threatened by NeXT, C hackers are justified when they fear Eiffel; their species is endangered. Well, NeXT and ISE have also in common the fact they are not offsprings of industry moguls (AT&T, IBM, Xerox are moguls), and do not have the negative corporate policy of the latters. More seriously, I thing that Eiffel is particularly fitted to support the programming environment of the NeXT. Not only both products embody concepts which define the future of computer ap- plication development, but Eiffel provides all the qualities necessary to intense development of well-defined (ANSI-C or C++ code is not well defined) and reusable class-libraries neccessary to the NeXT. Everybody would gain to such an union (ISE, NeXT, and most of all the user who would escape the inherent problems of C and use a real, well-constructed, complete language). I have obvious interrest in writing this letter because the best of Eif- fel would be joined with the best of the NeXT, on top of the best of MACH so that, in despite that I can't have one to drive home, I would work with a Rolls-Royce all day long. Frederic
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Marcel Waldvogel and Netfuture.ch.