🚀 go-pugleaf

  The meeting began with an informal discussion of current events, and 
the recent suggestion in comp.lang.eiffel that "Eiffel" may have to be 
renamed.  "Freedom from C++" seemed like one reasonable alternative!

Next the group discussed some recent activity in the Eiffel world:
    the upcoming Class Struggle,
    the pending 0.7 release of the ELJ project,
    the new Envision 1.1 release from Eiffel software
      (sorry, I can't ever remember the correct capitalization for that 
one)
    the latest SmartEiffel 1.1 Beta,
    the recent, heated debate over ECMA standardization and the latest 
SE Beta.

The group discussed the need for an LCD projector for future 
presentations. I volunteered to investigate pricing for used models, and 
Rex Fowler said that FSD should be able to share the cost of the 
projector with the group. We expect to propose a plan to the group at 
the next meeting for obtaining a projector.

The main course for the evening was served up by Daniel von Dinklage, 
who gave a presentation on meta-programming, how it can be used to 
generate Eiffel, and how Eiffel could be modified to better support MP. 
Daniel's enthusiasm for this subject was contagious as he went through 
his overview of metaprogramming, and by the end everyone was excited 
about the possibilities he discussed.

After Daniel's presentation, we had an informal discussion about the 
issue of immutability with Eiffel objects, immutability being a 
qualifier that guarantees constancy or prevention of state change in an 
object.  Daniel offered up the most interesting suggestion for the 
evening: that it might be sufficient to declare attributes as being 
immutable and rely on a static, whole system analysis to detect 
modifying calls to an attribute and flag these as errors. This approach 
addresses my main concern about using a qualifier similar to "const"in 
C++ -- that being "const measles" where const declarations tend to 
spread through code like some kind of disease. However, it's not clear 
if this approach would hold up in the face of polymorphism, covariance 
and similar issues that may be present in a complex object architecture. 
Daniel plans to further develop his notion, and we will hear more about 
it in the future.

In April, we'll receive a presentation from Jacob Gore, author of 
"Object Structures: Building Object Oriented Software Components With 
Eiffel." We'll also be getting an update on the CEUG Open Source 
project, with a demonstration of the audio and video capabilities of the 
Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) wrapper we are developing.

Daniel's presentation can be downloaded at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/colorado_eiffel_users/files/Metaprogramming/
To see Daniel's presentation,  you need to be a member of the CEUG. 
Don't worry, the membership requirements aren't onerous. We just ask 
that, if you are in the Denver area when a meeting occurs, that you 
attend the meeting.

For information about the Eiffel Class Struggle, visit:
http://www.eiffel-nice.org/eiffelstruggle/2003/index.html

For more about the ELJ project, visit:
http://elj.sf.net

To read more about the Envision release, go to:
http://www.eiffel.com/products/envsn10/

For SmartEiffel, visit:
http://smarteiffel.loria.fr/

To read up on SmartEiffel changes and the project's involvement with 
ECMA, check the mailing list archive at:
http://wwsympa.loria.fr/wwsympa/arc/smarteiffel

Reviews of Jacob's book can be found at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201634805/qid=1045954200/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-5283975-8152851?v=glance&s=books 


The CEUG Open Source Project is located on SourceForge:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ceug/