Writing 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 Meyer More Quotes by Bertrand Meyer More Quotes From Bertrand Meyer You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time. Bertrand Meyer computer quality technology There are only two things wrong with C++: The initial concept and the implementation. Bertrand Meyer initials computer two Correctness 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 Meyer quality doe littles Careful 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 Meyer party clever running Incorrect documentation is often worse than no documentation. Bertrand Meyer computer-programmers documentation programming As 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 Meyer celebrate use facts Software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for extension, but closed for modification. Bertrand Meyer etc should class C++ is the only current language making COBOL look good Bertrand Meyer cobol language looks Ask not first what the system does; ask what it does it to! Bertrand Meyer programming doe firsts The role of a trainer or consultant is to empower the customer, not to make himself indispensable Bertrand Meyer indispensable empowering roles Eiffel 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 Meyer used language found Constants are widely known for the detestable practice of changing their values; we should prepare ourselves against the consequences of such fickleness Bertrand Meyer known should practice I have always felt sympathy towards the biologists who accept to debate creationists. Now I also understand them better; one can fight opinions, not articles of faith. Bertrand Meyer debate opinion fighting I 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 gears running thinking Perfect reusable components are not obtained at the first shot. Bertrand Meyer programming perfect firsts
