alberto@grasp.cis.upenn.edu (Alberto Izaguirre) (03/14/91)
Can someone tell me if Eiffel is better than C++. Or better can someone compare both of them. Tx, Alberto
sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (03/15/91)
In article <39100@netnews.upenn.edu> alberto@grasp.cis.upenn.edu (Alberto Izaguirre) writes: >Can someone tell me if Eiffel is better than C++. >Or better can someone compare both of them. Certainly :-) C++ is better than Eiffel. oops, I meant Eiffel is better that C++ :-) Really, this is a religious issue. They are very different languages, with different strengths and weaknesses. Eiffel is an extremely pure OO language with little or now non-OO features. In particular there are no free procedures, everything is a class method. And all function calls are treated as message passing. Everything is an object, the main 'built-in' type being a object handle. Eiffel also has much built-in support for compile-time and run-time code verification and error handling. (But the types of all objects are determined at run type). C++ is an extremely flexible language, designed for relatively efficient implementation. It provides many choices to the programmer as to how to make the tradeoff between performance and structure. It provides more in the way of static type checking and type safety, with most type determination occuring at compile time. In particular, C++ guarentees that you cannot 'send a message' to an object that does not understand it (unless you deliberately break the type system). -- --------------- uunet!tdatirv!sarima (Stanley Friesen)
immo@ibmpcug.co.uk (Immo Huneke) (03/17/91)
In article <39100@netnews.upenn.edu> alberto@grasp.cis.upenn.edu (Alberto Izaguirre) writes: > Can someone tell me if Eiffel is better than C++. > Or better can someone compare both of them. > Tx, Alberto In Logica several years back, we participated in an ESPRIT project (HTDS). A preliminary investigation revealed that Eiffel was preferable to release 1 of C++, but we couldn't afford it and eventually did the project quite success- fully in Oregon C++, which was close to Release 2. My opinion now is that both have shortcomings, and that you take your pick according to what you are trying to do. I know C++ a bit better than Eiffel, so the shortcomings I perceive in C++ are: - lack of facilities for dynamic binding - problems with garbage collection (there isn't any) - no standard way of saving objects in a database or passing them between tasks. On the plus side, it is very efficient, it does not suffer from Smalltalk- like namespace pollution, and a lot of useful class libraries are now readily available. You may also be interested in looking at Objective-C from Stepstone Corp. Brad Cox (founder of this company) thought up the idea of "software ICs" and has been steadily expanding the available programme for the last five years. -- Automatic Disclaimer: The views expressed above are those of the author alone and may not represent the views of the IBM PC User Group. --