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Bertrand Meyer

 

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Bertrand Meyer



 
 
Bertrand Meyer (born 1950 in France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
) is an academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language
Eiffel (programming language)

Eiffel is an International Organization for Standardization-standardized, object-oriented programming language designed to enable programmers to efficiently develop extensible, reusable, reliable software....
.

rand Meyer received the equivalent of a bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts for three, four, or in some cases and countries, five or six years....
 in engineering from the École polytechnique
École Polytechnique

The ?cole Polytechnique , often referred to by the nickname X, is the foremost France grande ?cole of engineering . Founded in 1794 and initially located in the Quartier Latin in central Paris, it was moved to Palaiseau in 1976....
 in Paris
Paris

Paris is the Capital of France and the country's largest city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the ?le-de-France Regions of France ....
, a master's degree
Master's degree

A master's degree provides a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of profession. Within the area studied, graduates possess advanced knowledge of a specialized body of theory and applied topics; high order skills in analysis, Critical thinking and/or professional application; and the ability to problem solving a...
 from Stanford University
Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private university research university located in Stanford, California, California, United States....
, and a PhD
Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph.D. or PhD for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", is an postgraduate academic degree awarded by University....
 from the Université de Nancy in Nancy, France. He had a technical and managerial career for nine years at Électricité de France
Électricité de France

?lectricit? de France is the main electricity generation and distribution company in France. It was founded on April 8, 1946, as a result of the nationalisation of a number of electricity producers, transporters and distributors by the minister of industrial production Marcel Paul....
, and for three years was on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public university research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system....
.

Since October 2001, he has been Professor of Software Engineering at ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich

ETH Z?rich or Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Z?rich is a science and technology university in the Z?rich, Switzerland. Locals sometimes refer to it by the name Poly, derived from the original name Eidgen?ssisches Polytechnikum or Federal Polytechnic Institute....
, 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
Monash University

Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Australia. It is Australia's largest university with about 55,000 students.The University has a total of eight campuses: six in Victoria, Australia , one in Monash University Malaysia Campus and one in Monash South Africa....
 in Melbourne
Melbourne

Melbourne is the more common name for the geographic region and Census in Australia of the Greater Melbourne metropolitan area. It is the second List of cities in Australia by population in Australia, with a population of approximately 3.8 million and serves as the List of Australian capital cities of Victoria ....
, Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
 (1998–2003) and membership of the French Academy of Technologies
French Academy of Technologies

The French Academy of Technologies is a learned society, founded in 2000, with an emphasis on technology. It is the newest of French academies....
.






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Bertrand Meyer (born 1950 in France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
) is an academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language
Eiffel (programming language)

Eiffel is an International Organization for Standardization-standardized, object-oriented programming language designed to enable programmers to efficiently develop extensible, reusable, reliable software....
.

Education and academic career

Bertrand Meyer received the equivalent of a bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts for three, four, or in some cases and countries, five or six years....
 in engineering from the École polytechnique
École Polytechnique

The ?cole Polytechnique , often referred to by the nickname X, is the foremost France grande ?cole of engineering . Founded in 1794 and initially located in the Quartier Latin in central Paris, it was moved to Palaiseau in 1976....
 in Paris
Paris

Paris is the Capital of France and the country's largest city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the ?le-de-France Regions of France ....
, a master's degree
Master's degree

A master's degree provides a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of profession. Within the area studied, graduates possess advanced knowledge of a specialized body of theory and applied topics; high order skills in analysis, Critical thinking and/or professional application; and the ability to problem solving a...
 from Stanford University
Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private university research university located in Stanford, California, California, United States....
, and a PhD
Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph.D. or PhD for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", is an postgraduate academic degree awarded by University....
 from the Université de Nancy in Nancy, France. He had a technical and managerial career for nine years at Électricité de France
Électricité de France

?lectricit? de France is the main electricity generation and distribution company in France. It was founded on April 8, 1946, as a result of the nationalisation of a number of electricity producers, transporters and distributors by the minister of industrial production Marcel Paul....
, and for three years was on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public university research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system....
.

Since October 2001, he has been Professor of Software Engineering at ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich

ETH Z?rich or Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Z?rich is a science and technology university in the Z?rich, Switzerland. Locals sometimes refer to it by the name Poly, derived from the original name Eidgen?ssisches Polytechnikum or Federal Polytechnic Institute....
, 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
Monash University

Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Australia. It is Australia's largest university with about 55,000 students.The University has a total of eight campuses: six in Victoria, Australia , one in Monash University Malaysia Campus and one in Monash South Africa....
 in Melbourne
Melbourne

Melbourne is the more common name for the geographic region and Census in Australia of the Greater Melbourne metropolitan area. It is the second List of cities in Australia by population in Australia, with a population of approximately 3.8 million and serves as the List of Australian capital cities of Victoria ....
, Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
 (1998–2003) and membership of the French Academy of Technologies
French Academy of Technologies

The French Academy of Technologies is a learned society, founded in 2000, with an emphasis on technology. It is the newest of French academies....
. 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
Object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm that uses "Object_" and their interactions to design applications and computer programs....
 (OOP). His book Object-Oriented Software Construction
Object-Oriented Software Construction

Object-Oriented Software Construction is the title of a book by Bertrand Meyer, widely considered a foundational text of object-oriented programming....
 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
Design by contract

Design by Contract or Programming by Contract is an approach to designing computer software. It prescribes that software designers should define Formal methods, precise and verifiable interface specifications for Component-based software engineering#Software component based upon the theory of abstract data types and the conceptual metaph...
.

His experiences with object technology through the Simula
Simula

Simula is a name for two programming languages, Simula I and Simula 67, developed in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard....
 language, as well as early work on abstract data types and formal specification
Formal specification

In computer science, a formal specification is a mathematics description of software or hardware that may be used to develop an implementation. It describes what the system should do, not how the system should do it....
 (including the Z notation
Z notation

The Z notation , named after Zermelo-Fr?nkel set theory ? J.R. Abrial answers the question "Why Z?" with "Because it is the ultimate language!" ? , is a Formal specification specification language used for describing and modeling computing systems....
), provided some of the background for the development of Eiffel. Eiffel and Simula have been influential in the development of other languages including Python
Python (programming language)

Python is a general-purpose high-level programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python's core syntax and semantics are Minimalism , while the standard library is large and comprehensive....
.

In 2005, Meyer was a winner of the AITO Ole-Johan Dahl
Ole-Johan Dahl

Ole-Johan Dahl was a Norway computer scientist and is considered to be one of the fathers of Simula and object-oriented programming along with Kristen Nygaard....
 and Kristen Nygaard
Kristen Nygaard

Kristen Nygaard was a Norway mathematician, computer programming language pioneer and politician. He was born in Oslo and died of a myocardial infarction in 2002....
 prize. It is awarded annually to two individuals who have made significant technical contributions to the field of Object Orientation.

On 9 June 2007, Meyer received the Software System Award of the ACM
Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership was approximately 83,000 as of 2007....
 for "impact on software quality" in recognition of the design of Eiffel. He is a 2008 Fellow of the ACM.

Wikipedia hoax

On 28 December 2005, an anonymous user falsely announced Meyer's death on German Wikipedia
German Wikipedia

The German Wikipedia is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia. It is the second largest Wikipedia, after the English Wikipedia, and was one of the first to be created....
's biography of Meyer. The hoax was reported five days later by the Heise News Ticker
Heinz Heise

Heinz Heise is a Germany Publisher. It was created in Hanover in 1949 as an address and telephone directory publisher, then later expanded to include magazines and loose leaf collections....
 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, 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."

See also

  • Object-Oriented Software Construction
    Object-Oriented Software Construction

    Object-Oriented Software Construction is the title of a book by Bertrand Meyer, widely considered a foundational text of object-oriented programming....
  • Eiffel programming language
    Eiffel (programming language)

    Eiffel is an International Organization for Standardization-standardized, object-oriented programming language designed to enable programmers to efficiently develop extensible, reusable, reliable software....


External links

  • of Object-Oriented Software Construction
    Object-Oriented Software Construction

    Object-Oriented Software Construction is the title of a book by Bertrand Meyer, widely considered a foundational text of object-oriented programming....
    , 2nd edition by Tal Cohen
  • , by Bertrand Meyer