Thomas Beale wrote: >Andrew po-jung Ho wrote: >> Horst, it doesn't matter how awesome Eiffel is or whether it is or is not a fully fledged compilable OO language. There are lots of compilable, full OO languages in the year 2000. > >Name one (no university languages allowed). Then let's talk about "full OO". Smalltalk. http://www.squeak.org http://www.pocketsmalltalk. I recently ran across a couple of Open Source implementations of Smalltalk that I find absolutely intriguing, partly because both are at least partially compiled and capable of running on PDA's. Squeak has some similarity to SmallEiffel and ISE in that it compiles itself to C as needed. I plan to look at them in detail either in my spare time or after I move our MUMPS based HIS onto a fully Open Source MUMPS platform, whichever comes first. ;-) >Eiffel/GEHR is not >trying to be elitist; it is trying to inject real quality into systems >which can indeed be used by everyone. Which brings us back to GT.M and VistA... ;-) Perhaps the strongest feature of GT.M appears to be its proven flexible high performance scalable database engine designed for 24x365 operation. It provides a simple C level interface which could be easily accessed from Eiffel/GEHR. One possibility that would provide is direct access to VistA data and metadata from GEHR and vice versa. That could benefit both VistA and GEHR. >> >The damage B. Meyer has done to Eiffel with his rather unqualified >> >statements regarding free software and the open source community is hard to >> >repare - but then, without him there wouldn't have been an eiffel in the >> >first place. Still, this might explain why this otherwise excellent language >> >has not taken off in the o.s. community as much as it would deserve. > >This is one of those areas where one has to separate the author's personal viewpoint from the technical offering (and there were some valid points by the way). I'm not sure if it has had any effect, since I would be surprised to learn that many people had read this paper. I read it when the topic hit this list, as I am sure did many others who had been favorably impressed with your arguments for Eiffel. It left an indelible impression. The damage is deep. People must read it themselves. I remain interested in the language but my enthusiasm is depressed. --------------------------------------- Jim Self Manager and Chief Developer VMTH Computer Services, UC Davis (http://www.vmth.ucdavis.edu/us/jaself)
