WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

Eiffel
    n 1: French engineer who constructed the Eiffel Tower
         (1832-1923) [syn: Eiffel, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel]

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

Eiffel

    An object-oriented language produced by Bertrand
   Meyer in 1985.  Eiffel has classes with multiple
   inheritance and repeated inheritance, deferred classes
   (like Smalltalk's abstract class), and clusters of
   classes.  Objects can have both static types and dynamic
   types.  The dynamic type must be a descendant of the static
   (declared) type.  Dynamic binding resolves multiple
   inheritance clashes.  It has flattened forms of classes, in
   which all of the inherited features are added at the same
   level and generic classes parametrised by type.

   Other features are persistent objects, garbage collection,
   exception handling, foreign language interface.  Classes
   may be equipped with assertions (routine preconditions and
   postconditions, class invariants) implementing the theory of
   "Design by Contract" and helping produce more reliable
   software.

   Eiffel is compiled to C.  It comes with libraries containing
   several hundred classes: data structures and algorithms
   (EiffelBase), graphics and user interfaces (EiffelVision) and
   language analysis (EiffelLex, EiffelParse).

   The first release of Eiffel was release 1.4, introduced at the
   first OOPSLA in October 1986.  The language proper was first
   described in a University of California, Santa Barbara report
   dated September 1985.

   Eiffel is available, with different libraries, from several
   sources including Interactive Software Engineering, USA (ISE
   Eiffel version 3.3); Sig Computer GmbH, Germany (Eiffel/S);
   and Tower, Inc., Austin (Tower Eiffel).

   The language definition is administered by an open
   organisation, the Nonprofit International Consortium for
   Eiffel (NICE).  There is a standard kernel library.

   An Eiffel source checker and compiler front-end is
   available.

   See also Sather, Distributed Eiffel, Lace, shelf.

   E-mail: .

   ["Eiffel: The Language", Bertrand Meyer, P-H 1992].

   (1998-11-15)