Sept. 29, 1997

Bertrand Meyer interview in Software Development

The story

Software Development, September 1997, carries a long interview by Carlo Pescio of Bertrand Meyer, president of ISE and a pioneer of object technology. Titled The view from the Eiffel Tower, the article starts

Bertrand Meyer -- scholar, entrepreneur, and business manager -- offers insight into his clear and practical approach to software development.

Inset in the article is a glowing review by Roger Smith of Meyer's latest book-cum-CD-ROM, Object-Oriented Software Construction, second edition, (Prentice Hall, 1997):

The first edition [...] was a classic text for learning object-oriented programming. It was unique because it dealt with fundamental software development issues in a very literate and useful way, independent of any programming system, language or application area. [The second edition] will be appreciated by the developer community even more than the first edition, if that is possible. In my opinion [...] it is destined to become the comprehensive and definitive reference for most methodological and technical questions raised by object technology.

The interview ranges over a large number of topics, from business-oriented ones like entrepreneurship in software to sophisticated technical questions such as static typing, and "purity" in object-oriented languages, the role of Java, the Ariane 5 crash, reuse, the contributions of the Business Object Notation, teaching Design by Contract, concurrency and the SCOOP model, the growth of Eiffel.

Here are a few tidbits. In response to the question "How is Eiffel purity better than hybrids such as C++?"

First I should mention that Eiffel only partly competes with C hybrids such as C++. It should rather be viewed as a system construction mechanism that can be used to bring together software components. Some of these components will be written in Eiffel; but it is also important to reuse components written in C, C++, Java, Fortran etc. For that reason ISE has devoted considerable efforts to developing a full-fledged interface to these languages. You can call C, C++ etc. from Eiffel, and conversely. We even have a new tool called Legacy++ which will take a C++ class and produce an Eiffel class that completely encapsulates it. Using Legacy++ one can integrate existing C++ code into an Eiffel development as if it were all in Eiffel. [...]

More generally what matters to me is not some abstract notion of "purity" (a term that I don't use) but the emphasis on quality.

One of the reasons for the success of Eiffel in large industrial projects is that people with all kinds of backgrounds -- programmers, but also bankers, traders, mathematicians, engineers etc. -- can learn it quickly and effectively, without having to master tricky and error-prone constructs coming from C. program.

Some of the biggest successful O-O projects [...] have been produced using Eiffel. In banking and financial applications, in particular, ambitious developments that can make or lose millions of dollars for their companies tend to turn to Eiffel. A well-publicized one is the CALFP Bank project, 700,000 lines of ISE Eiffel on which the entire bank's operation (front office, back office, derivatives trading etc.) relies. This was developed on time and within budget by a group consisting for two thirds of non-software professionals (traders, economists, bankers) who immediately took to Eiffel because of its clarity, simplicity and effectiveness, enabling them to program their pricing models and financial products directly. What other approach would have worked? Can one imagine traders writing C++ or Java code full of { and } and & and * and getting the result right?

I have seen many people apply Design by Contract and never saw anyone that was scared by the actual techniques, which are simple and accessible to anyone with a secondary school education! The idea of Design by Contract is to avoid the exaggerations of formal methods and to yield something concrete that can be used to benefit all developments, large and small, at little cost. The consequences are just fantastic: with hardly any extra effort, you get software that works the first time around. It is incredible how quickly you find potential bugs before they have had the time to hit you. It's something that anyone can use; the techniques are simple and easy to apply. The real question is whether one can afford not to apply it.

To conclude, you are one of the few researchers who embraced a successful entrepreneurial and management career, and still kept doing an excellent research work. How did you manage to live in both worlds? Do you constantly watch out for the marketability of your research, or do you mostly try to make advanced technology practical, or what else?

Thanks for your assessment. It is true that I enjoy both the academic world [...] and the business world. There is no need for a split personality; both aspects are complementary. Even from an academic perspective, the real test of success in software engineering is, in my opinion, whether someone, somewhere, likes your ideas well enough to apply them to his software development, when his company's success and his own career depend on it. Without that validation, you don't know whether your ideas are any good at all.

It's just too easy to propose all kinds of concepts that look great on paper. The only thing that matters in the end is whether they will lead to successful software development under the normal constraints of industry development. [...] Then you'll find out whether the ideas are any good.

There is much more to the interview. Read the full article; if you have trouble obtaining the magazine, ask ISE for a reprint.

Reference

See also:

Bertrand Meyer's bio in his "People Behind Eiffel" page.

Other reviews of Object-Oriented Software Construction, second edition.

To other "news stories of the week".

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