This site's content was compiled from 1993 to 2006. Beyond that, Google is your friend.
This collection of quotes has grown out of a set that I originally posted to comp.lang.eiffel in 1998. The quotes are from the Internet, from conference presentations, and from books. I regret that I haven't always kept a precise attribution.
Most of the quotes are from the early days of Eiffel. Some are amusing, others are wry, witty, insightful or even sad. Each of them has something to say.
Not surprisingly, a large number are from Bertrand Meyer, the inventor of Eiffel. He has great insight, strong opinions, a sense of wit, and can express himself eloquently. These characteristics make for some great quotes. I've not even attempted to include the many hidden jokes and witty asides scattered throughout Bertrand's books. Often I don't even notice these until the second or third reading, particularly when they are in the sidebars. For an example, look up "loaves" in the index to ETL.
Finally, remember that a quote is (by definition) taken out of context, and that some of these quotes are almost twenty years old. So don't get too upset about the content of any specific quote!
I hope you enjoy reading them.
-- Roger Browne
This is the TENTH International Eiffel User Conference? And still nobody uses it? Maybe there's something wrong.
-- John Nagle, 1992
As Mr. Nagle so competently points out, almost no one uses Eiffel; in fact until recently there were only 9 users. But now a 10th person just started, so we are holding a conference, appropriately titled the TENTH EIFFEL USER conference, to celebrate.
-- Bertrand Meyer, 1992
Better to name a spade a spade, and distinguish the two only in classes that both dig holes and play bridge.
-- Ned Horvath, 1989
Perfect reusable components are not obtained at the first shot. Yet if one is aiming at a full-fledged industry of reusable software components (as the goal is with Eiffel), perfection is what we should strive for. (Eventually, that is.)
-- Bertrand Meyer, 1989
Careful as they may be, developers of Eiffel libraries will always run into cases in which, after releasing a library class, they suddenly experience what in French is called esprit de l'escalier or wit of the staircase: a great thought which unfortunately is an afterthought, like a clever reply that would have stunned all the other dinner guests -- if only you had thought of it before walking down the stairs after the party is over.
-- Bertrand Meyer, 1989
I do not think that in the long term Eiffel is really ``competing'' with C++. They have almost nothing in common in their aim and spirit. In my undoubtedly biased view, the real competitor to Eiffel is Ada.
-- Bertrand Meyer, 1989
You can have quality software, or you can have pointer arithmetic; but you cannot have both at the same time.
-- Bertrand Meyer, 1989
For me, Eiffel was kind of like a chastity belt. It definitely keeps you "pure" but you will probably have less fun.
-- Ron Guilmette, 1989
Eiffel programmers can have fun, too, thank you. Of course, someone whose idea of fun is to spend his or her nights debugging will have less of it. But then such a person wouldn't need a chastity belt anyway.
-- Bertrand Meyer, 1989
I prefer to have as little as possible to do with Bertrand Meyer
-- Bjarne Stroustrup, 1989
I'll be quite frank: at Interactive, we think that Eiffel industry is going to be so huge in some time from now that we'll make more than a decent living, thank you, even if we control only part of that industry
-- Bertrand Meyer, 1989
I wish nothing but success for Eiffel and its (her?) users -- and have a merry Christmas. (or whatever it is that you do...)
-- Michael Robin, 1989
Maybe I have had a too big an exposure to Cobol, but I would propose "create x as D using f(...)"
-- Erland Sommarskog, 1990
One should not despair of the human race; just give people time and they will understand
-- Bertrand Meyer, 1990
Eiffel is likely to get fast sooner than another language is likely to get good
-- Burton Leathers, 1990
As an old died in the wool C programmer I was afraid I wouldn't take to Eiffel (all that "freedom" lost) but I got to tell you this is one nice piece of work
-- Frank Caggiano, 1990
An average COBOL programmer should have less problems learning Eiffel than C++
-- Richie Bielak, 1993
The tombstone will say: "Here lies Eiffel: The best OOP language. It just couldn't compete."
-- Lasse Petersen, 1993
"Eiffel: The Language" is certainly by far the most expensive piece of fiction on my bookshelf. Excellent, entertaining fiction, but it remains fiction nevertheless
-- Lasse Petersen, 1993
Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero
-- sig of Don Nichols
Evil Source is worse than no Source at all
-- Judith Schlesinger
Remember, programming in Eiffel is supposed to be HARD. You have to SUFFER for your art. Eiffel is in the grand tradition of the the Hoare "programming is not for everyone" school. The formalism is not to be avoided, but studied with dedication until it is mastered. One can no more program properly without mastery of the formal approach than one can do physics without calculus.
-- John Nagle, 1992
As for our grandchildren, only the paleontology professors among them will know what C++ was
-- Bertrand Meyer, 1990
"Goodbye World!": the last program you write in C
-- sig of Bruce Feist, 1993
Is there anyone out there? Is the Eiffel tower still standing?
-- Rick Jones, 1990
The design _is_ the program
-- Steve Tynor, 1990
Programs are like baby squirrels. Once you pick one up and handle it, you can't put it back. The mother won't feed it.
-- sig of Richie Bielak, 1991
I have always felt sympathy towards the biologists who accept to debate creationists. Now I also understand them better; one can fight opinions, not articles of faith.
-- Bertrand Meyer, 1991
Beyond 100,000 lines of code, you should probably be coding in Ada
-- P.J. Plauger
I like Eiffel. Its flaws are more usable than most languages' features
-- Dave Griffith, 1993
If enough good C++ programmers learn Eiffel we'll find flaws to wave about like captured scalps, the way you wave your favorite problems
-- Mark Terribile
There are bugs in the garbage collector, multiple inheritance doesn't work properly, the documentation is photocopied with pages missing, yet it still beats the crap out of C++. When it works, it will be so good that I can't stand it!
-- A. O. Van Emmenis, 1993
C is its own virus
-- Miguel Gallo, 1991
Is EIFFEL a tower in Paris, and SMALLTALK just the thing Parisians do in Cafes?
-- Tarangkumar Patel, 1991
If [a program] was hard to write, it should be hard to understand
-- Datamation around 1984
C++, even though less elegant than Eiffel, is genuine magic. In a race between genuine magic and a fairy tale, the genuine magic usually wins.
-- Eric Smith, 1991
Language wars are a silly business, and I was stupid to start one.
-- Paul Johnson, 1993
I do feel like it is an old friend, and will be able to easily program in it when the opportunity comes along ... Is this a strength of the language, that many of us are now experts in the language, without even having produced a single line of program text? I don't believe I have ever felt so comfortable with another language, even when I have produced many lines of program in it.
-- Ian Joyner, 1992
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change
-- W. S. Burroughs, quoted by Chris Flatters 1992
Eiffel borrows quite openly from several earlier programming languages and I am sure that if we had found a good language construct in C we would have used it as well
-- Bertrand Meyer, 1992
I've never thought about pre- and post- conditions until I started coding in Eiffel. Now I can't imagine trying to write code without them.
-- Richie Bielak, 1992
-- sessions from the 25th anniversary celebration seminar for SIMULA and OOP
If it can be defined by just one sentence, Eiffel is a language to write Eiffel libraries - that is to say to write the best possible, reusable industrial-quality software components that we [can] think of
-- Bertrand Meyer in an interview with .EXE magazine
Eiffel has, perhaps, the image of a cruel professor giving students tough assignments and not accepting excuses ... C/C++, on the other hand, has almost a sports-car image
-- John Nagle, 1992
The best tool in the world isn't going to be used if it weighs half a ton and breaks often enough to notice.
-- L. Peter Deutsch, 1992
I have programmed in ForTran, Pascal, Modula, VAX Assembly, C, a little C++, and finally Eiffel. Eiffel has been by far the most fun.
-- James McKim
...All that you need,
To program with speed:
Objects and classes,
Compiled in four passes...
Try inheritance today,
In the Eiffel way,
And you are certain to find,
That when it is combined,
With the bindings dynamic,
And the typings static,
And the classes generic,
And ISE magic,
Things fall in place,
By mysterious grace,
Makes programming a pleasure,
By any sane measure...
-- Ross D'Souza, 1992
After all, global variables *are* evil. ;-)
-- Richie Bielak, 1992
A lot of people *think* they understand C, but it is not only stranger than they imagine, it is stranger than they *can* imagine
-- Richard A. O'Keefe, 1994 on comp.lang.misc
BM> But the forced march to Java in 1997 is no more justified than the BM> mass conversions to C++ in 198. DS> --- DS> ^ DS> | DS> How old is Bjarne? :-)------| BM> Sorry, should have read "1987". Maybe a result of the Year 1000 problem.
-- Usenet exchange between D'Arcy Smith and Bertrand Meyer, 1997
The belief is still widespread in the computing community that C and its derivatives are programming languages - languages intended for people to write programs in. This is a regrettable misunderstanding ... I wish Dennis Ritchie would come out and dispel the confusion once and for all.
-- Bertrand Meyer, JOOP July/August 1998
I invented the term 'Object Oriented' and I can tell you that I did not have C++ in mind
-- Alan Kay
Claiming Java is easier than C++ is like saying K2 is shorter than Everest
-- Larry O'Brien, editor Software Development
