There are only two things wrong with C++: The initial concept and the implementation.
Bertrand MeyerWriting a class without its contract would be similar to producing an engineering component (electrical circuit, VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) chip, bridge, engine...) without a spec. No professional engineer would even consider the idea.
Bertrand MeyerCareful as they may be, developers of Eiffel libraries will always run into cases in which, after releasing a library class, they suddenly experience what in French is called esprit de l'escalier or wit of the staircase: a great thought which unfortunately is an afterthought, like a clever reply that would have stunned all the other dinner guests - if only you had thought of it before walking down the stairs after the party is over.
Bertrand MeyerSoftware entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for extension, but closed for modification.
Bertrand MeyerThe role of a trainer or consultant is to empower the customer, not to make himself indispensable
Bertrand MeyerYou can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time.
Bertrand MeyerCorrectness is clearly the prime quality. If a system does not do what it is supposed to do, then everything else about it matters little.
Bertrand MeyerAs Mr. Nagle so competently points out, almost no one uses Eiffel; in fact until recently there were only 9 users. But now a 10th person just started, so we are holding a conference, appropriately titled the TENTH Eiffel USER conference, to celebrate.
Bertrand MeyerEiffel borrows quite openly from several earlier programming languages and I am sure that if we had found a good language construct in C we would have used it as well.
Bertrand MeyerI think Smalltalk is inappropriate for serious industrial developments. After all, run time is a little late to find out whether you have a landing gear.
Bertrand Meyer