| Online Eiffel Documentation

EiffelStudio

# Getting started with Eiffel

This introductory documentation will let you become familiar with the essentials of the Eiffel language and method, and the EiffelStudio environment.

The online documents listed here are available as part of the delivery. If you are reading this page as part of an Eiffel installation or on a CD, the links below will take you to the local versions of the documents. You can also find all these documents on the Eiffel site at http://docs.eiffel.com.

## 1 Learning the Eiffel method and language

Two introductory documents are available here, one short and one longer:

- Invitation to Eiffel: a general introduction.
- An Eiffel Tutorial: a more extensive presentation.

Once you know the basics, it's always useful to take a look at the EiffelBase classes for examples and guidance. You will find them in the delivery at $ISE_EIFFEL /library/base . You might start with the list classes at $ISE_EIFFEL /library/base/structures/list .

To become truly proficient in the method, read the book Object-Oriented Software Construction, 2nd edition; for a full description of the language, get the book Eiffel: The Language. (These two links require Web access. )

## 2 Learning to use the EiffelStudio environment

Eiffel is not only a method and a language, it's also a great development environment, EiffelStudio, helping you throughout the entire software lifecycle, from thinking about your system, modeling it, designing it, implementing it, debugging it, measuring it, maintaining it. For an overview, read the

- Guided Tour of EiffelStudio

which will introduce you to the essential properties of EiffelStudio, enough to get started with your own projects.

## 3 General information

The following two documents present a general overview of the arguments for Eiffel:

- Why your next project should use Eiffel
- For the truly hurried: Eiffel: the 1-minute summary