Eiffel is an object-oriented programming language designed by Bertrand Meyer (an object-orientation proponent and author of Object-Oriented Software Construction) and Eiffel Software.
As a language, Eiffel is more than a programming language. It covers not just programming in the restricted sense of implementation but the whole spectrum of software development:
- Analysis, modeling and specification, where Eiffel can be used as a purely descriptive tool to analyze and document the structure and properties of complex systems (even non-software systems).
- Design and architecture, where Eiffel can be used to build solid, flexible system structures.
- Implementation, where Eiffel provides practical software solutions with an efficiency comparable to solutions based on such traditional approaches as C and Fortran.
- Maintenance, where Eiffel helps thanks to the architectural flexibility of the resulting systems.
- Documentation, where Eiffel permits automatic generation of documentation, textual and graphical, from the software itself, as a partial substitute for separately developed and maintained software documentation.
Here’s our recommended free books that’ll help you master Eiffel.
1. A Functional Pattern System for Object-Oriented Design by Thomas Kühne
Design patterns inspired by functional programming concepts can advance object-oriented design.
This book promotes the idea that concepts from the world of functional programming can be captured with design pattern descriptions. These can then be used to benefit from functional programming concepts with ordinary object-oriented languages.
The functional patterns are evaluated for their impact on language design and a new approach to a dual-paradigm language is presented.
2. Eiffel:Analysis, Design and Programming Language by ECMA International
This document provides the full reference for the Eiffel language.
Eiffel is a method of software construction and a language applicable to the analysis, design, implementation and maintenance of software systems. This Standard covers only the language, with an emphasis on the implementation aspects.
As a consequence, the word “Eiffel” in this document is an abbreviation for “the Eiffel language”.
Our research has discovered a few other free Eiffel books but they are very incomplete and cannot be recommended. If you know about any other good quality free Eiffel books, do share in the comments below.
All books in this series:
| Free Programming Books | |
|---|---|
| Java | General-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, high-level language |
| C | General-purpose, procedural, portable, high-level language |
| Python | General-purpose, structured, powerful language |
| C++ | General-purpose, portable, free-form, multi-paradigm language |
| C# | Combines the power and flexibility of C++ with the simplicity of Visual Basic |
| JavaScript | Interpreted, prototype-based, scripting language |
| PHP | PHP has been at the helm of the web for many years |
| HTML | HyperText Markup Language |
| SQL | Access and manipulate data held in a relational database management system |
| Ruby | General purpose, scripting, structured, flexible, fully object-oriented language |
| Assembly | As close to writing machine code without writing in pure hexadecimal |
| Swift | Powerful and intuitive general-purpose programming language |
| Groovy | Powerful, optionally typed and dynamic language |
| Go | Compiled, statically typed programming language |
| Pascal | Imperative and procedural language designed in the late 1960s |
| Perl | High-level, general-purpose, interpreted, scripting, dynamic language |
| R | De facto standard among statisticians and data analysts |
| COBOL | Common Business-Oriented Language |
| Scala | Modern, object-functional, multi-paradigm, Java-based language |
| Fortran | The first high-level language, using the first compiler |
| Scratch | Visual programming language designed for 8-16 year-old children |
| Lua | Designed as an embeddable scripting language |
| Logo | Dialect of Lisp that features interactivity, modularity, extensibility |
| Rust | Ideal for systems, embedded, and other performance critical code |
| Lisp | Unique features - excellent to study programming constructs |
| Ada | ALGOL-like programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages |
| Haskell | Standardized, general-purpose, polymorphically, statically typed language |
| Scheme | A general-purpose, functional language descended from Lisp and Algol |
| Prolog | A general purpose, declarative, logic programming language |
| Forth | Imperative stack-based programming language |
| Clojure | Dialect of the Lisp programming language |
| Julia | High-level, high-performance language for technical computing |
| Awk | Versatile language designed for pattern scanning and processing language |
| CoffeeScript | Transcompiles into JavaScript inspired by Ruby, Python and Haskell |
| BASIC | Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code |
| Erlang | General-purpose, concurrent, declarative, functional language |
| VimL | Powerful scripting language of the Vim editor |
| OCaml | The main implementation of the Caml language |
| ECMAScript | Best known as the language embedded in web browsers |
| Bash | Shell and command language; popular both as a shell and a scripting language |
| LaTeX | Professional document preparation system and document markup language |
| TeX | Markup and programming language - create professional quality typeset text |
| Arduino | Inexpensive, flexible, open source microcontroller platform |
| TypeScript | Strict syntactical superset of JavaScript adding optional static typing |
| Elixir | Relatively new functional language running on the Erlang virtual machine |
| F# | Uses functional, imperative, and object-oriented programming methods |
| Tcl | Dynamic language based on concepts of Lisp, C, and Unix shells |
| Factor | Dynamic stack-based programming language |
| Eiffel | Object-oriented language designed by Bertrand Meyer |
| Agda | Dependently typed functional language based on intuitionistic Type Theory |
| Icon | Wide variety of features for processing and presenting symbolic data |
| XML | Rules for defining semantic tags describing structure ad meaning |
| Vala | Object-oriented language, syntactically similar to C# |
| Standard ML | General-purpose functional language characterized as "Lisp with types" |
| D | General-purpose systems programming language with a C-like syntax |