Eiffel (programming language)
Eiffel is an object-oriented programming language designed by Bertrand Meyer (an object-orientation proponent and author of Object-Oriented Software Construction) and Eiffel Software. Meyer conceived the language in 1985 with the goal of increasing the reliability of commercial software development; the first version becoming available in 1986. In 2005, Eiffel became an ISO-standardized language.
| Paradigm | Object-oriented, Class-based, Generic, Concurrent |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Bertrand Meyer |
| Developer | Eiffel Software |
| First appeared | 1986 |
| Stable release | EiffelStudio 23.09
/ 6 October 2023 |
| Typing discipline | static |
| Implementation language | Eiffel |
| Platform | Cross-platform |
| OS | FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, OpenBSD, Solaris, Windows |
| License | dual and enterprise |
| Filename extensions | .e |
| Website | eiffel |
| Major implementations | |
| EiffelStudio, LibertyEiffel, SmartEiffel, Visual Eiffel, Gobo Eiffel, "The Eiffel Compiler" tecomp | |
| Influenced by | |
| Ada, Simula, Z | |
| Influenced | |
| Ada 2012, Albatross, C#, D, Java, Racket, Ruby, Sather, Scala | |
The design of the language is closely connected with the Eiffel programming method. Both are based on a set of principles, including design by contract, command–query separation, the uniform-access principle, the single-choice principle, the open–closed principle, and option–operand separation.
Many concepts initially introduced by Eiffel later found their way into Java, C#, and other languages. New language design ideas, particularly through the Ecma/ISO standardization process, continue to be incorporated into the Eiffel language.