The Howdy Glossary

Eiffel is an object-oriented programming language developed by Bertrand Meyer in the late 1980s, emphasizing software engineering principles such as design-by-contract, automatic memory management, multiple inheritance, and genericity. It also incorporates features like exception handling and reflection. Eiffel aims to provide a robust and efficient language that promotes good software engineering practices, facilitating the building of reliable and maintainable software systems. Meyer's goal was to prioritize correctness, ease of use, and extensibility in creating a language that assists in developing high-quality software.

Distinctive features set Eiffel apart from other programming languages. These include design-by-contract to formalize relationships between components through assertions; automatic memory management for handling memory allocation and deallocation automatically; support for multiple inheritance allowing a class to inherit from more than one superclass; and genericity enabling reusable components with parameterized types. Additionally, Eiffel offers powerful polymorphism at both type and function levels, dynamic binding for flexibility, comprehensive exception handling for robust error management, reflection for introspection of program structures, optimized code generation through C-based backends via its compilers, and development tools supporting incremental compilation and debugging.

Eiffel competes with other object-oriented languages like Java, C++, C#, Python, Ruby, and JavaScript but stands out due to its strong emphasis on software engineering principles enhancing code correctness, reliability, maintainability. Design-by-contract fosters clearer specifications leading to bug-free code; automatic memory management reduces memory-related errors improving stability; multiple inheritance alongside genericity promotes flexibility/reuse; comprehensive exception handling aids effective error management while reflection supports dynamic analysis. With optimized code generation capabilities across platforms via compilers plus supportive libraries/tools providing incremental compilation/debugging—Eiffel proves compelling for developers seeking quality-driven development projects focused on robustness/ease-of-maintenance.