Bertrand Meyer and C#

[Mike Maddux]

Does anyone have any guesses as to why Bertrand Meyer is out doing seminars on .NET and C#? Is the creator of Eiffel REALLY that excited about Microsoft's latest direction?

Mike

[Kostello]

Well, if you didn't know, there has been talk of Eiffel# (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?URL=/library/techart/PDC_eiffel.htm) and dispite its funny name, you can bet that when I finally have the resources to download .NET (ie, Win2000 box) I will be more interested in that than in C#. I've just recently been taking a look at Eiffel and it does look very exciting.

I agree that it does seem a little odd that the Eiffel founder is excited about .NET. I do think that there would be big benefits in teaming up a truly OO and robust language such as Eiffel with a well established component binary standard such as COM, however. It'll be interesting to see how that pans out.

ps - are you an Eiffel veteran? I would be interested to know what kinds of projects you tend use it for, and when you would rather use C++, etc, and if it is easy to integrate the two.

[dk1]

I think the reason why Meyer is excited about .NET is that any language can tap into CLR and take advantage of Microsoft's extensive library without the needs to develop its own library. Supposedly Microsoft will make it easy for third party language developers to make add-in packages for VS .NET.

Senior Systems Developer
The Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory