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The future of Liberty Eiffel


From: Laurie Moye
Subject: The future of Liberty Eiffel
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2021 17:49:36 +0000
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Hi Eiffelers,

I think "Re: Noob First Post" is no longer appropriate to this thread. Is "The future of Liberty Eiffel" an OK thread name?

As a user of Eiffel since 1993 (Eiffel/S), and of Small/Smart/Liberty Eiffel from SE-0.75 onwards, I have been overjoyed to see this flurry of interest in the project after it seemed to be moribund.

I have just one plea to make. This compiler has never been developed in a very user-friendly way. For those of us who are not software professionals, but engineers and scientist who just need a robust, reliable language in which to write our most complicated projects, and who are devoted to open-source software, the compiler has proved a joy and a boon, but every new version would contain non-essential changes to the syntax. This meant that to get the existing code to compile with the new compiler would require literally thousands of edits. In some cases it would be easier to produced one's own hacked version of the new release, reverting parts of the compiler code to allow the old syntax to be used.

Would it be possible to declare a policy of strict backward compatibility? The syntax should never be changed for non-essential reasons. If it becomes absolutely essential to change the syntax to allow new features, legacy options should be added to allow the old syntax and disallow the new features so that old code will always be able to run without any changes.

I would love to be able to contribute to this new project, but, being even less young than Duke Normandin, my brain cells are a little rusty. My only contribution ever was to track down a very nasty bug in the garbage collector. I am now much more at ease hacking the compiler code (although I would need an expert to check my corrections), so I will try to help.


I was inspired to learn Eiffel after reading the first 40 pages of Meyer's "Object-oriented Software Construction" and the Introduction to his "Eiffel the language". I recommend anybody to re-read these. We should treat Eiffel as an "industrial strength" object-oriented language, and make it a delight for engineers and scientists, as well as software professionals to use.

         Laurie



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