In conclusion, Eiffel is an excellent language to learn, especially for students. Due to its 3 main characteristics namely; extendability, reusability, and reliability. As computer science educators we have a responsibility to teach our students the best: skills that will land them a job and enable them to grow in that job.
Most educators know all too well the limitations of the solutions that used to work in the seventies and eighties -- Pascal for introductory programming, perhaps a bit of Scheme to encourage abstract thinking, C for systems programming. C++ and Java are complicated and hard to teach, leading to courses that teach the language when they should teach the concepts. The challenges of software development today demand a more modern approach.
CS and information systems departments around the world have found the solution: ISE Eiffel. It has proved to be the method of choice for universities that place teaching quality and student satisfaction at the top of their concerns.
Only with ISE Eiffel do you get:
- The full benefit of object technology
- A simple, clear, easy to learn language
- Software components covering data structures, algorithms, graphics, databases, networking, Web programming, numerical computation and more
- Openness: Eiffel talks to C, to C++, very soon to Java, so that your students learn to use the power of object technology to integrate software written using low-level approaches
With Eiffel you are not stuck within the confines of one environment. Eiffel focuses on the concepts, not on strange notational details. Educators have remarked how much easier it is to teach C++, Smalltalk, Java or even C once the students have mastered the techniques of modern system construction through Eiffel.
Students agree too, and so do corporate recruiters and journalists. According to Amy Cody-Quinn from Management Recruiters International, quoted in ComputerWorld: " There is a big problem with people who say they know C++ -- but they don't really know how to do objects. If they have Eiffel on the résumé, then we know they really have the proper understanding of what they are doing " (in ComputerWorld, December 18, 1995).
Students with a narrow set of skills are sure to lose in today's competitive job environment. With Eiffel you build a strong basis from which students can learn all the major approaches to software construction. You equip them with the problem-solving skills that will make them able to learn new languages and tools quickly and effectively.
Since 1989, hundreds of universities around the world have been using Eiffel to give their students the best. Some of those universities are Rochester Institute of Technology since 1994; McMaster University (Canada); University of Technology, Sydney since 1989; and George Mason University since the early nineties.
