Eiffel : The Language (Prentice Hall Object-Oriented Series) [Paperback]

Bertrand Meyer (Author)

Book Description

Series: Prentice Hall Object-Oriented Series | Publication Date: October 1, 1991

A complete description of the Eiffel language, covering some essential elements of the Basic Eiffel Libraries and of the supporting environment.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

A complete description of the Eiffel language, covering some essential elements of the Basic Eiffel Libraries and of the supporting environment.

From the Back Cover

Quickly emerging as the language of choice for developers of quality software, this guide explains how the Eiffel language combines rigorous software engineering principles with advanced object-oriented techniques. It reveals the simplicity, consistency, and blend of various powerful mechanisms in Eiffel, including: an object-oriented structure based on classes . . . multiple and repeated inheritance information hiding assertions to guarantee, document, and test the correctness of software components . . . strong typing backed by support for generic classes . . . dynamic binding a highly dynamic run-time model supporting garbage collection renaming and redefinition facilities . . . disciplined exception handling and support for persistent objects. As both an implementation language and a high-level notation for analysis and design, Eiffel emphasizes the industrial production of reusable software components. Written for software designers, analysts, and programmers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (October 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0132479257
• ISBN-13: 978-0132479257
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,343,112 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bertrand Meyer is Chief Architect of Eiffel Software (based in California, http://eiffel.com) and Professor of Software Engineering at ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

He is the initial designer of the Eiffel method and language and has continued to participate in its evolution. He also directed the development of the EiffelStudio environment, compiler, tools and libraries through their successive versions.

His latest book, Touch of Class: Learning to Program Well, Using Object Technology and Contracts, is based on several years of teaching introductory programming at ETH and is scheduled for publication on August 9, published by Springer Verlag (see Amazon page and Springer page).

Earlier books include "Object-Oriented Software Construction" (a general presentation of object technology, winner of the 1998 Jolt Award); "Eiffel: The Language" (description of the Eiffel language); "Object Success" (a discussion of object technology for managers); "Reusable Software" (a discussion of reuse issues and solutions); "Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages". He has also authored numerous articles (see publication list) and edited or co-edited several dozen conference proceedings, including the 2005 "Verified Software".

Other activities include: chair of the TOOLS conference series (running since 1989, hosted at ETH since 2007, next year session in Malaga, Spain); director of the LASER summer school on software engineering (taking place every year since 2003 in early September in Elba island, Italy); member, and chair since 2009, of the IFIP TC2 committee (Software technology); member of the IFIP Working Group 2.3 on Programming Methodology; member of the French Academy of Technologies. He is also active as a consultant (object-oriented system design, architectural reviews, technology assessment), trainer in object technology and other software topics, and conference speaker. Awards include ACM Software System Award, Fellow of the ACM, Dahl-Nygaard Prize, and honorary doctorate from the Technical University (ITMO) of Saint Petersburg.

Prior to founding Eiffel Software in 1985, Meyer had a 9-year technical and managerial career at EDF, and was for three years on the faculty at the University of California. His experience with object technology through the Simula language, as well as early work on abstract data types and formal specification (including participation in the first versions of the Z specification language) provided some of the background for the development of Eiffel.

At ETH Zurich he pursues research on the construction of high-quality software (see Web site of the Chair of Software Engineering at http://se.ethz.ch).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent source., June 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Eiffel : The Language (Prentice Hall Object-Oriented Series) (Paperback)

This is an excellent book for someone approaching Eiffel with zero prior knowledge of the language, and with zero knowledge of OOP. I am one of those rare people who still writes only in C and thinks (thought) that OOP is (was) for the birds. I strongly recommend this as an introduction both to Eiffel and to OOP. It's clear, concise, complete, and very well written/organized/presented.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exhaustive, Detailed Language Definition, November 6, 2002

By 

Brian E. Heilig (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eiffel : The Language (Prentice Hall Object-Oriented Series) (Paperback)

Eiffel has been developed by the Non-profit International Consortium for Eiffel (NICE) for the last 17 years. This book is the language definition as proposed by that committee. It is exhaustive and of such high detail as to allow anyone to write a compiler for the language. My hat is off to the Eiffel consortium for their efforts to explicitly define the language in an open standard, making the developer's job easier.

I sympathize with the previous reviewer that was overwhelmed by the detail in this book. Please allow me to caution the would-be consumer. This book is not an object oriented tutorial. It is not an introduction to the language. If you would like either of these purchase Object Oriented Software Construction, 2e.

If you have more than a passing interest in Eiffel and would like a language reference, or if you are planning to implement your own compiler, this book is for you. While most of the information is still accurate, there have been many additions to the language that are not in the book. Minus one star for taking so long to provide an update.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Best available documenation on Eiffel, February 11, 2005

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Eiffel : The Language (Prentice Hall Object-Oriented Series) (Paperback)

For those who don't already know, Eiffel is a 1990-era object oriented programming language. It is best known as the vehicle for Meyer's "design by contract" methodology, a relaxed version of formal, mathematical proofs of program correctness.

This book sets out to be two things: a user guide and also a specification of the Eiffel language, as it was defined at version 3. It's not quite rigorous enough to be a full spec, but adequate as a user guide. This is not a tutorial for beginning programmers, a very different kind of book, but it says at the outset that it was never meant for beginners. That's fair, since beginners and experienced programmers need quite different kinds of material for learning a language. The organization isn't all I could have asked for, but I could use it for wrting Eiffel programs if I had to.

The one thing that stands out in this book is its lengthy discussion of the typing system. That is well justified. Eiffel has the most complex type system I've seen, including parametric types (like C++ templates), multiple and repeated inheritance, and more than one scheme for creating aliases. Its repeated inheritance mechanism allows class B to claim class A as a superclass twice - like "diamond" inheritance in C++, but without the intermediate steps. That's where renaming comes in, creating ways to refer to the two different A superclasses unambiguously. Also, Eiffel allows a subclass to over-ride a function's return type - just to add flavor to the mix and complexity to the class-type rules. Once you combine parametric types, aliasing, and all the rest, type compatibility becomes a real hairball and is the subject of lengthy discussion. Despite its length, that discussion lacks clarity and examples, so I would expect a lot of ugly surprises if I tried doing serious work in this language.

The one serious omission here is lack of description of LACE - sort of a linker language for Eiffel, with a renaming facility of its own. Java and C# programmers won't even know what a linker is. Good. Since Eiffel requires LACE for just about any nontrivial application, however, something a bit more readable than appendix D would have been helpful. Another important idea is also weak or absent in this discussion: how name spaces are organized for projects so big that duplicate class names become likely. That may be a lack in Eiffel itself, though.

There's a lot to say about Eiffel, good, bad, and just puzzled. I'm not commenting on the language itself, here, except to say that I'm glad more recent languages are simpler, or at least put their complexity elsewhere.

I can't give this a ranking among other Eiffel books, because there are so very few others. It appears adequate as a reference for advanced programmers, but suffers from an inverted organization and thin discussion of some important topics.

//wiredweird