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EiffelStudio O-O Programming Suite for Mac OS X
name_already_in_use writes "Eiffel Software released their object-oriented programming environment for Mac OS X. It is a powerful language offering all the usual O-O wonders as well as few unique features of it's own (Design by Contract, generics). All compiled code can be run on multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, Solaris, and of course now Mac OS X, so there's no need to re-write code for different architectures."
They shot themselves in the foot with licensing.
... and also from the fact that their site doesn't work in Safari. Their "contact us" link doesn't even work (it appears to attempt to open a dhtml panel). I don't think they'll be getting too many Mac orders just yet.
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Eiffel is designed for large-scale programming. For that purpose it has strong typing, generics (roughly: C++ templates done right), a good module system, design by contract (rougly: assertions on class members). All in all it is a well-designed language with two big flaws: it has a quirky syntax (sometimes different for the sake of it), and it is not popular; the price of the official compiler doesn't help.
Python is in its own way also a well-designed language, but you don't want to write large programs in it, i.e. software that requires a team to implement. I don't know Ruby, but I suspect the same applies.
Eiffel is also interesting in that the designer has never released a really free version of the compiler. Usually that is deadly for an obscure language. After all who would be mad enough to pay for a compiler without knowing the language? Somehow Mr. Meyer has earned his living all these years selling Eiffel compilers. I don't know any other language designers that have managed this.
"Contact Us" doesn't work in Camino either. Great work!
Eiffel is designed for large-scale programming.
It may have been intended for that, but a language that for years didn't even support type-safe separate compilation clearly wasn't designed for large-scale programming.
All in all it is a well-designed language
No, it is not a well-designed language and it never was. It is a language that sounds appealing to a software engineer because it seems to embody good software engineering practices (whether it does or does not is a separate debate). But in order to be a well-designed language, it first needs to get the basics right: the type system, separate compilation, a reasonable set of language constructs, etc., and Eiffel fell short there for years.
well, i think there was/is a "personal" version for windows and linux that's free but limits the number of classes you can have in a program.
if you want a "free speech" compiler, don't overlook SmartEiffel, a pretty good GPL'ed implementation of the language.
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May I suggest you look at Smalltalk too, which has been running on MacOSX for, well, pretty much since it came out, and didn't seem to warrant an anouncement on slashdot.
Both VisualWorks Smalltalk and Squeak have wicked cool environments, lots of neat stuff, public code repositories with lots of stuff, good friendly communities, run quickly, are objects thru-n-thru and of course do the xplatform thing at the binary level.
That language, Objective-C, which makes much of the cool stuff that is OSX possible, was after all inspired by Smalltalk.
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