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Fifth International Eiffel Programming Contest

Berend de Boer writes "After a two year hiatus, the Eiffel Struggle is organized again. This series of contests started in 1997. To enter, people have to submit an Eiffel application or library. Closing date is October 31. Entries are judged according to 12 criteria. Entries are ranked into gold, silver and bronze. In order of rank, winners will be able to pick one of the prizes ."

21 comments

  1. Nice Prizes by RealityMogul · · Score: 2, Funny

    Damn, are there any Pascal/Delphi contests out there with a $1400 prize? The only one I've seen lately gave away a copy of a Delphi book for making a Tic-Tac-Toe game.

  2. Eiffel.NET by Per+Wigren · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I love Eiffel, it's a beautiful language! The only problem is that because almost nobody else uses it, I can't use it either because I have to stay compatible with others.. I wish the smarteiffel-programmers will make it a full CLR-language so I can use .NET-classes and make my Eiffel-classes usable by others...

    --
    My other account has a 3-digit UID.
    1. Re:Eiffel.NET by berenddeboer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Compared to the number of Visual Basic programmers, the numbers of Eiffel users is small. But not insignificant. And: C and Perl also started with one programmer. Also, Eiffel seems to attract people who are interested in correctness and reuse.

      --
      If I had a sig, I would put it here.
    2. Re:Eiffel.NET by Tumbleweed · · Score: 2, Funny

      Didn't C start with two programmers (K&R)? :)

    3. Re:Eiffel.NET by leviramsey · · Score: 2, Funny

      And does the popularity of the language indicates how popular correctness and reuse are with the programming population?

    4. Re:Eiffel.NET by berenddeboer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Agreed. Correctness is not something programmers are interested in, it seems. Why else are people still using languages that cannot assure that you do not compare metres and feet? Why are people still using languages that cannot assure you don't have buffer overflows?

      Testing doesn't help, because your tests can have bugs too and are probably incomplete. It's gives a lot of peace to the mind if you hit the compile button in Eiffel and it compiles successfully.

      That does not imply Eiffel is the end of the road. I would like to see something like Spark being available for Eiffel.

      --
      If I had a sig, I would put it here.
    5. Re:Eiffel.NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Use EiffelStudio (http://www.eiffel.com) from Eiffel Software to develop .NET application.

    6. Re:Eiffel.NET by morgajel · · Score: 3, Interesting

      For a Programming Languages class we covered eiffel.
      nearly everyone who took the class walked away with a bad experience. Why? Because of the documentation.
      If you want eiffel to be more widely used, I highly suggest someone writing some decent documentation. Perhaps a searchable database of object, along with description of what the objects do and what their functions do.

      That was my only real complaint. the current documentation sucks.

      --
      Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
    7. Re:Eiffel.NET by miked64 · · Score: 2, Informative

      It is a full-CLR language if I'm not mistaken. I just think you have to pay for it but I'm not sure.

      http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/techart/PDC_eiff el.htm
      Hope that helps.

    8. Re:Eiffel.NET by Tumbleweed · · Score: 1

      They were a couple of cigarettes? What are you talking about?

    9. Re:Eiffel.NET by WeiszNet · · Score: 1

      Assuming I understand what you want to say, i.e. you did not find a way to browses the classes of a library you used, I think thats weird.

      Because Eiffel has put emphasis on documentation _in_ the source code long before there was JavaDoc (for example). The language reference book (ETL) even defines certain views that help you understand how to use a class (flat, short, flat/short etc).

      And all Eiffel compilers I know support those tools. Even the non graphical SmartEiffel comes with command line tools to search a given system.

      What libraries/compiler did you use to get such a bad experience?

    10. Re:Eiffel.NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shut up, you English dickeater.

    11. Re:Eiffel.NET by morgajel · · Score: 1

      Smart/small eiffel for linux.
      keep in mind that our professor was a complete bitch, and had a superiority complex.

      she needed a leg up on us to answer our questions, so it's possible she didn't tell us about any internal documentation because she would lose her position of power(yes, this sound paranoid, but we learned to expect this kind of behavior from her.)

      I found a couple of the source files for classes while browsing online, but they were severely lacking in description of what the functions DID.

      --
      Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
    12. Re:Eiffel.NET by AtATaddict · · Score: 1

      Say I want to find documentation on the DICTIONARY class.

      localhost% short dictionary

      Or maybe I'd rather look up the array class.

      localhost% short array

  3. Backup servers by berenddeboer · · Score: 4, Informative

    In case the NICE tiny solaris server is killed, here some backup servers:

    http://www.berenddeboer.net/nice/eiffelstruggle/20 03/

    And the Google cache.

    .
    --
    If I had a sig, I would put it here.
  4. eiffel links at cetus by WeiszNet · · Score: 4, Informative

    Eiffel is a very powerful OO language. There are tons of links about Eiffel at: http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_eiffel.html. Check them out!

    1. Re:eiffel links at cetus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good site!!
      very useful set of intro's to a wannabe eiffel hacker.

  5. Eiffel IRC channel at irc.debian.org by WeiszNet · · Score: 3, Informative

    For those who would like to know more about Eiffel from people who use it or just have a nice chat, drop by at #eiffel on irc.debian.org. (I think irc.freenode.org works as well)

  6. Free Mac, Linux and Windows EiffelStudio available by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    here. Check it out if you can as this software is great and helps me no end.

  7. And not forgetting www.eiffel.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0