# Eiffel

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Eiffel and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as the language that introduced design by contract, which uses preconditions and postconditions to check code. The most common caveat is that early tool support was poor.

## Why people recommend it

- Design by contract pioneer (5 comments): "It's pre-conditions and post-conditions prove the properties of the code that you actually are executing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46078887)) "A shoutout to Eiffel, the first "modern" (circa 1985) language to incorporate Design by Contract." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47572984)) "it supports design by contract, an idea that was created and implemented first in Eiffel" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50251711))
- Preferred over Rust and Smalltalk (2 comments): "Smalltalk, Eiffel, and Simula, were better languages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47923628)) "I would rather use Eiffel than use Rust like that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173296))

## What people warn about

- Early tool support was poor (1 comments): "the software tool support initially was appalling" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49684037))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Rust](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rust.md): 2039 recommend
- [Go](https://hackerapproved.com/p/go-programming-language.md): 1254 recommend
- [Python](https://hackerapproved.com/p/python.md): 1067 recommend
- [Zig](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zig.md): 743 recommend
- [TypeScript](https://hackerapproved.com/p/typescript.md): 574 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Eiffel", https://hackerapproved.com/p/eiffel/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).