Bertrand Meyer

Bertrand Meyer (born 1950 in France) is an academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language.

Education and academic career

Bertrand Meyer received the equivalent of a bachelor's degree in engineering from the École polytechnique in Paris, a master's degree from Stanford University, and a PhD from the Université de Nancy in Nancy, France. He had a technical and managerial career for nine years at Électricité de France, and for three years was on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Since October 2001, he has been Professor of Software Engineering at ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where he pursues research on building trusted components (reusable software elements) with a guaranteed level of quality.

His other activities include being adjunct professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia (1998–2003) and membership of the French Academy of Technologies. He is also active as a consultant (object-oriented system design, architectural reviews, technology assessment), trainer in object technology and other software topics, and conference speaker.

Computer languages

Meyer pursues the ideal of simple, elegant and user-friendly computer languages and is one of the earliest and most vocal proponents of object-oriented programming (OOP). His book "Object-Oriented Software Construction" is widely considered to be the best work on presenting the case for OOP. Other books he has written include "Eiffel: The Language" (a description of the Eiffel language), "Object Success" (a discussion of object technology for managers), "Reusable Software" (a discussion of reuse issues and solutions), and "Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages". He has authored numerous articles and edited conference proceedings.

He is the initial designer of the Eiffel method and language and has continued to participate in its evolution, and is the originator of the development method known as Design by Contract.

His experiences with object technology through the Simula language, as well as early work on abstract data types and formal specification (including the Z notation), provided some of the background for the development of Eiffel. Eiffel and Simula have been influential in the development of other languages including Python.

In 2005, Meyer was a winner of the AITO Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard prize. It is awarded annually to two individuals who have made significant technical contributions to the field of Object Orientation. [ [http://www.aito.org/Dahl-Nygaard/2005.html "The AITO Dahl-Nygaard Prize Winners For 2005"] - AITO press release]

On 9 June 2007, Meyer received the Software System Award of the ACM for "impact on software quality" in recognition of the design of Eiffel. [Scientist to receive ACM award for development Eiffel computer language: ACM Press release, 29 March 2007, at [http://campus.acm.org/public/pressroom/press_releases/3_2007/eiffel.cfm] .]

Wikipedia hoax

On 28 December 28 2005, an anonymous user falsely announced Meyer's death on German Wikipedia's biography of Meyer. The hoax was reported five days later by the Heise News Ticker and the article was immediately corrected. Many major news media outlets in Germany and Switzerland picked up the story, creating the German Wikipedia's version of the Seigenthaler incident. Meyer went on to publish a positive evaluation of Wikipedia, [Bertrand Meyer: Defense and Illustration of Wikipedia, at [http://se.ethz.ch/~meyer/publications/wikipedia/wikipedia.pdf] ] concluding "The system succumbed to one of its potential flaws, and quickly healed itself. This doesn't affect the big picture. Just like those about me, rumors about Wikipedia's downfall have been grossly exaggerated."

References

ee also

*Object-Oriented Software Construction
*Eiffel programming language

External links

* [http://se.ethz.ch/~meyer/ Bertrand Meyer home page]
* [http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/m/Meyer:Bertrand.html DBLP Bibliography]
* [http://archive.eiffel.com/general/people/meyer/ "The people behind Eiffel" web page]
* [http://tal.forum2.org/oosc2 A review] of Object-Oriented Software Construction, 2nd edition" by Tal Cohen
* [http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/meyer1.htm Critique of Meyer's "Object-Oriented Software Construction" Book]
* [http://se.ethz.ch/~meyer/images/sounds/name_english.wav How to pronounce his name in English]
* [http://www.eiffel.com/general/monthly_column/2006/January.html Defense and illustration of Wikipedia] , by Bertrand Meyer