For the truly hurried here is a capsule overview of Eiffel Software's Eiffel:
- A comprehensive approach to the construction of successful software.
- The goal: cheaper (spend less on development, debugging, maintenance); better (get the bugs before they get you); faster (bring your products out before anyone else); and easier to maintain, reuse and extend.
- The only approach that covers analysis, design, implementation and maintenance in a single framework.
- Includes a language, a methodology, and a complete graphical development environment.
- Language: widely recognized as the best and simplest implementation of object-oriented concepts. Clean, simple, readable, powerful, easy to learn.
- Methodology: based on Design by Contract -- building reliable software by defining precise contracts between its various components, and making sure the software construction process enforces these contracts.
- Powerful graphical environment supporting lightning-fast compilation (Melting Ice Technology) and unique facilities for analysis (CASE), documentation, exploration ("browsing"), documentation, HTML, XML and UML generation.
- Complete portability across major industry platforms: Windows 98/Me/XP/NT/2000, major Unix versions, Linux, even VMS. Portable graphics with native look-and-feel on each platform.
- One of the very first commercial environments to be available on the . NET framework, as a result of a partnership with Microsoft.
- Sophisticated mechanisms for contract monitoring, inheritance (single, multiple and repeated), exception handling, genericity.
- Generation of C code for portability and efficiency; speed of executables rivals native C.
- Rich set of libraries covering graphics, the Web, networking, fundamental algorithms and data structures, lexical analysis, parsing, etc.
- Proven track record of successful projects, including some of the largest successful O-O projects ever built anywhere: finance, telecommunications, CAD-CAM, CASE, education etc.
- The most effective solution available today for the professional software developer
For a more detailed overview see An Invitation to Eiffel.