🚀 go-pugleaf

ziane@angela.inria.fr (Mikal Ziane (Univ. Paris 5 and INRIA) ) writes:

>Can someone tell me why Eiffel is not successful ? It looks much better than C++.
>So what happened ? Is AT&T responsible for this shame or did Eiffel come too late,
>or what ?

I think eiffel isn't popular (note, that in ways it *is* successful) is 
partially because of the zealots who push it.  Instead of producing apps and 
explaining why you should use eiffel, they focus on the weaknesses of C++.  
This is just my opinion though.  
The amazing number of compilers and books help eiffel out a lot too...

>And can someone tell me what is the big deal with this Java language ?

It is kind of like C with objects or something, it is a lot easier to learn
than C++, or so I'm told.  I've never really played much with Java, just looked
at some code and read a lot about it in various magazines.  

>I heard several people saying:"It's going to wipe C++ off the scene in no time".
>So is it only a language to allow Web browsers to execute code, or is it
>really a better C++ (since apparently one of Sun's reason for creating
>Java was their big problems with C++) ?

It is a general purpose language, you can compile it, byte code compile it,
and I think you can interpret it.  The web ability isn't limited to Java, 
tcl, smalltalk, rexx and other languages could all do that also and there has
even been work on some of them.  I think sun talked a lot about the web in 
order to get java attention, it's really just another language.  Sun probably
created it for marketing reasons, IBM has "strategic" languages they endorse,
Bell has done a ton of research with C and variants.  MS has BASIC.  
Creating a language is just one of those things you do when you are a big 
company.  Java won't dethrone C++ anytime soon, but I could see it making a
niche.  It combines a lot of popular concepts and packages them in an easy to
use box and then they have created media hype and public interest by talking 
about all the web applications. (BTW, I read in Dobbs that the idea of running
applications through the web is patented!)

>Now Oberon and Modula 3. Are there free compilers for Windows 3.1 , DOS or Unix
>around ? And could someone briefly compare them to Eiffel ?

I don't know eiffel very well, I can recognize code and that is about it.
Oberon is Pascal III, it was deisgned by Dr. Wirth,  His theory is that most
new languages are very complex and difficult to learn and this also makes them
difficult to use. Oberon is supposed to be able to do everything you'd want to
do but it is very striped down and easy to learn and use.  Oberon looks like it
has promise as an academic language, but I haven't seen enough interest in it
to make it a good general purpose language for pumping out apps (that's my
opinion)  There is a free to students compiler/environment from Switzerland,
I know it runs on OS/2 and there is probably a windows version.  IBM also has
an employee written environment called HOPE (Hawthorn Oberon Prog. Env, I think
there is a language called HOPE which is different)  HOPE may not be supported
anymore the author of it is busy working on his Dr. Rexx/r. Dialog program 
which is written in Oberon.  This run under OS/2 and I think it also runs under
DOS/Windows.

Modula-3, I know very little about mod-3.  I've read a little about it in 
Dobbs, it looks a lot like C++ with some Ada mixed in.  I think GNU is working
on compilers for a few select machines.  Someone else can probably tell you
 more,