I am thinking, why did Eiffel die and why was it completely supplanted
by C++ and Java?

It never died, it is very much alive. If you look at the following page:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

Eiffel is listed in the top 50 for October 2012 (the listing for Eiffel goes up and down from month to month like any ranking based on websearch).

Just for the record: in spring 2016 Eiffel is no longer on that list, sadly.

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On 5/13/2016 12:09 AM, lunakid@gmail.com wrote:

I am thinking, why did Eiffel die and why was it completely supplanted
by C++ and Java?

It never died, it is very much alive. If you look at the following page:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

Eiffel is listed in the top 50 for October 2012 (the listing for Eiffel goes up and down from month to month like any ranking based on websearch).

Just for the record: in spring 2016 Eiffel is no longer on that list, sadly.

and here we are, June 2018, and Eiffel's not on the page anywhere.

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Bruce Axtens <snetxa@hotmail.com> writes:

On 5/13/2016 12:09 AM, lunakid@gmail.com wrote:

I am thinking, why did Eiffel die and why was it completely supplanted >>>> by C++ and Java?

It never died, it is very much alive. If you look at the following page: >>>
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html

Eiffel is listed in the top 50 for October 2012 (the listing for Eiffel goes up and down from month to month like any ranking based on websearch).

Just for the record: in spring 2016 Eiffel is no longer on that list, sadly. >>

and here we are, June 2018, and Eiffel's not on the page anywhere.

One way to keep a language alive, is to write a tool or an application
that is useful to users, and package it so it can be distributed on the
main Linux distributions. Then people will want to maintain or improve
it, and will learn the language.

There are several such tools written in Haskell, or erlang for example.

--
__Pascal J. Bourguignon
http://www.informatimago.com

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Manu!!!

TO ALL: Yes, it is true that Eiffel is on the Tiobe Index and has been for years! (in the top 50). This is pretty good accomplishment considering that there are about 700 programming languages in the world.

And to Manu's point—there are a lot of us who are working on attracting more and more developers into an Eiffel world. The biggest complaint (even from me) is the lack of libraries and products. For my part—I am trying to increase both (i.e. recently
Foggler, Rialize, and now Stantion). Moreover—even though the Eiffel Team is small they still do a ton of work. They just need a helping hand.

Therefore—if you see a library that ought to be there, then roll up your sleeves and start coding. Even a weak attempt is better than no attempt at all. If that library happens to be a C API, then talk with the Eiffel Team about WrapC and getting a
wrapper on it.

Emmanuel Stapf
Eiffel Software

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Hi Bruce,

I counted wrong. It is in the Top 100 (e.g. Next 50 after the First 50).

The Next 50 Programming Languages
The following list of languages denotes #51 to #100. Since the differences are relatively small, the programming languages are only listed (in alphabetical order).

ActionScript, Alice, Arc, Awk, B4X, bc, BCPL, Bourne shell, CFML, CL (OS/400), Clipper, CLIPS, Common Lisp, Eiffel, Elixir, Elm, Forth, Fortress, Haskell, Icon, Inform, Io, J#, Korn shell, LiveCode, Maple, Modula-2, MQL4, MUMPS, NATURAL, NXT-G, Oberon,
OCaml, Occam, OpenEdge ABL, PL/I, PostScript, PowerShell, Pure Data, Q, REXX, Ring, RPG, Simulink, Smalltalk, Solidity, SPARK, Stata, Uniface, Xojo

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Therefore—if you see a library that ought to be there, then roll up your sleeves and start coding. Even a weak attempt is better than no attempt at all. If that library happens to be a C API, then talk with the Eiffel Team about WrapC and getting a

wrapper on it.

Emmanuel Stapf
Eiffel Software

Maybe, judging by the Python data science crowd, it would be best to leverage a bunch of C libraries out there.

However, the Eiffel documentation is just about the pits, for me at least, with the numbers of practical examples close to zero. OTOH, it's good on the theoretical aspects. But that's not what I need when I'm in a hurry. When it comes to using Eiffel
collections, it is even worse.

So, if you want people to com to Eiffel, write good introductory documentation.

The reason Python has attracted so many non-programmers (but physicists, statisticians, etc) is because they found the entry level easy (I heard this on a recent Lex Friedman podcast, forgot the guy's name). My take on Eiffel is that it's easy too, or
reasonably easy - but the documentation and examples are so thin, you know? And that's on you guys, not on users coming to the language to check it out.

-- Hank

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Therefore—if you see a library that ought to be there, then roll up your sleeves and start coding. Even a weak attempt is better than no attempt at all. If that library happens to be a C API, then talk with the Eiffel Team about WrapC and getting

a wrapper on it.

Emmanuel Stapf
Eiffel Software

Maybe, judging by the Python data science crowd, it would be best to leverage a bunch of C libraries out there.

However, the Eiffel documentation is just about the pits, for me at least, with the numbers of practical examples close to zero. OTOH, it's good on the theoretical aspects. But that's not what I need when I'm in a hurry. When it comes to using Eiffel

collections, it is even worse.

So, if you want people to com to Eiffel, write good introductory documentation.

The reason Python has attracted so many non-programmers (but physicists, statisticians, etc) is because they found the entry level easy (I heard this on a recent Lex Friedman podcast, forgot the guy's name). My take on Eiffel is that it's easy too, or

reasonably easy - but the documentation and examples are so thin, you know? And that's on you guys, not on users coming to the language to check it out.

-- Hank

Eiffel died because it had the most stupid people manging it and in the community. They were not able to see and access any of the problems over a decade. Made me the most hated person in the EIffel comp.lang.eiffel world but i was right on every single
aspect a decade ago: Need for open source or free tier compiler, working on multithreading even if this means dropping command/query, make build tooling part of the language, improve modern features like meta and generic programming. They failed because
they were arrogant (typical french problem) and uncreative and never listening to real world usages.

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