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Eiffel was always great, the biggest problem as I remember it was that the compiler was very expensive, like a few thousand dollars a license. Meanwhile C++ was

by rb808 7y ago

Eiffel was always great, the biggest problem as I remember it was that the compiler was very expensive, like a few thousand dollars a license. Meanwhile C++ was much cheaper (and easy to pirate) and Java was free. You can see the resulting popularity.

deleted 7y ago
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bhaak 7y ago
I was on the Java train in the 90s, so I didn't pay much attention to C++ compilers. Therefore my question, wasn't the GNU C++ compiler an option at the time?
- rb808 7y ago
  Gnu C++ compiler was around but wasn't that good, it produced slow binaries and was slow with new features eg didn't have templates for a long time. Usually you had to use the compiler that came with your flavor of Unix which was usually free (then later they started charging for that too). Borland and MS Visual C++ were popular on Windows and just a few hundred dollars.
- pmontra 7y ago
  My experience in the early 90s: the compiler from HP was better than gcc, but for some reason we were downloading each version of gcc from the Usenet, building it (hours) and using it. Maybe some of the servers at university (all HP) didn't have a compiler licence? Or gcc did something the HP compiler couldn't do: maybe it compiled all the GNU userland and the other free/open source and the HP compiler couldn't. I remember that the portability issues were quite big back at the time (BSD vs SysV derivatives, etc.)
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  wasn't the GNU C++ compiler an option at the time? GCC wasn’t usable for serious C++ applications at the time because hardware costs would kill you. The SPARCworks binaries were so much better that the compiler licences paid for themselves 10x over (maybe more!) in the extra CPUs we didn’t need to buy. This was true up at least until the mid 00s. Even today many people find it worthwhile to pay for the Intel compiler for the same reason.

by rb808 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bhaak 7y ago

I was on the Java train in the 90s, so I didn't pay much attention to C++ compilers. Therefore my question, wasn't the GNU C++ compiler an option at the time?

rb808 7y ago
Gnu C++ compiler was around but wasn't that good, it produced slow binaries and was slow with new features eg didn't have templates for a long time. Usually you had to use the compiler that came with your flavor of Unix which was usually free (then later they started charging for that too). Borland and MS Visual C++ were popular on Windows and just a few hundred dollars.
pmontra 7y ago
My experience in the early 90s: the compiler from HP was better than gcc, but for some reason we were downloading each version of gcc from the Usenet, building it (hours) and using it. Maybe some of the servers at university (all HP) didn't have a compiler licence? Or gcc did something the HP compiler couldn't do: maybe it compiled all the GNU userland and the other free/open source and the HP compiler couldn't. I remember that the portability issues were quite big back at the time (BSD vs SysV derivatives, etc.)
goatinaboat 7y ago
wasn't the GNU C++ compiler an option at the time? GCC wasn’t usable for serious C++ applications at the time because hardware costs would kill you. The SPARCworks binaries were so much better that the compiler licences paid for themselves 10x over (maybe more!) in the extra CPUs we didn’t need to buy. This was true up at least until the mid 00s. Even today many people find it worthwhile to pay for the Intel compiler for the same reason.