Re: eiffel parser in SmartEiffel

On Jul 21, 8:01 am, Friedrich Dominicus <just-for-news-fr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> llothar <llot...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:
>
> > Yes i was considering Ada but i don't know enough to write this as a
> > recommendation.
>
> > Indeed Ada seems to be one of the few languages still alive and
> > without such an uncertain future. Also i don't know if the security
> > features in Ada are not getting into the way when you write an
> > interpreler where you need a lot of type unsafe casts.
>

llothar, Friedrich,

I have seen you both respond many times on comp.lang.eiffel and I
respect your
opinions because you both have experience with eiffel.  However, can
the situation
with eiffel really be that bad compared to other languages?  I
understand that
there is some bad relations between some users and the 2 eiffel
vendors (i.e.,
SmartEiffel team and Eiffel Software) but it seems that each vendors
product is
improving over the years.

For example, llothar, you have told me how you have modified your own
version
of SmallEiffel enough to generate an IDE that you sell.  That's
great!  Obviously,
it was a lot of time and effort, but you were able to build off of
what the
SmallEiffel team had developed.  Despite your dislike(?) for the
SmartEiffel team,
would you really say that your ability to build that IDE was not
helped by the
SmallEiffel tool and the language?

I say this looking at large clients of mine who have first decided C++
was best and
now they are on the Java bandwagon.  Every year they complain about
the downsides
of the language and the tools.  However, they continue to build large,
working systems.
I wonder if some of our discontent has to do with expectations that
eiffel would
be perfect because the design book (i.e., OO Construction) was so well
written and
is now old?

These clients cannot modify the compiler or fix the bugs because their
systems are
either closed source or impossible to understand.  Sometimes I wonder
if they would
take a chance on eiffel, but they would probably want to stick with
the "mainstream."

My 2 cents.

Lee