Bertrand Meyer (; ; born 21 November 1950) is a French academic, author, and consultant in the field of computer languages. He created the Eiffel programming language and the idea of design by contract.

Education and academic career

Meyer received a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

in engineering from the

École Polytechnique École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

in Paris, a second master's degree from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

, and a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...

from the Université de Nancy. He had a technical and managerial career for nine years at

Électricité de France Électricité de France S.A. (literally ''Electricity of France''), commonly known as EDF, is a French multinational electric utility company, largely owned by the French state. Headquartered in Paris, with €71.2 billion in revenues in 2 ...

, and for three years was a member of the faculty of the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

. From 2001 to 2016, he was professor of software engineering at ETH Zürich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where he pursued research on building trusted components (reusable software elements) with a guaranteed level of quality. He was Chair of the ETH Computer Science department from 2004 to 2006 and for 13 years (2003–2015) taught the Introduction to Programming course taken by all ETH computer science students, resulting in a widely disseminated programming textbook, '' Touch of Class'' (Springer). He remains Professor

emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

of Software Engineering at

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , a ...

and is currently Professor of Software Engineering and Provost at the

Schaffhausen Institute of Technology Constructor, formerly known as Schaffhausen Institute of Technology (SIT) is a private non-profit institute in Switzerland founded in 2019 by entrepreneur Serguei Beloussov. History The institute focuses on computer and software sciences and is ...

(SIT), a new research university in

Schaffhausen Schaffhausen (; gsw, Schafuuse; french: Schaffhouse; it, Sciaffusa; rm, Schaffusa; en, Shaffhouse) is a town with historic roots, a municipality in northern Switzerland, and the capital of the canton of the same name; it has an estimate ...

, Switzerland. He has held visiting positions at the

University of Toulouse The University of Toulouse (french: Université de Toulouse) was a university in the French city of Toulouse that was established by papal bull in 1229, making it one of the earliest universities to emerge in Europe. Suppressed during the Frenc ...

(Chair of Excellence, 2015–16),

Politecnico di Milano The Polytechnic University of Milan () is the largest technical university in Italy, with about 42,000 students. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and higher education courses in engineering, architecture and design. Founded in 18 ...

Innopolis University Innopolis University (russian: Университет Иннополис) is a university located in the city of Innopolis. The university was established on 10 December 2012 and specializes in information technology and robotics, as well as the ...

Monash University Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university has ...

and

University of Technology Sydney The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is a public research university located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Although its origins are said to trace back to the 1830s, the university was founded in its current form in 1988. As of 2021 ...

. 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. For many years Meyer has been active in issues of research and education policy and was the founding president (2006–2011) of Informatics Europe, the association of European computer science departments.

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 (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...

(OOP). His book '' Object-Oriented Software Construction'' is one of the earliest and most comprehensive works 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), ''Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages'', ''Touch of Class'' (an introduction to programming and software engineering) and ''Agile! The Good, the Hype and the Ugly'' (a tutorial and critical analysis of agile methods). He has authored numerous articles and edited over 60 conference proceedings, many of them in the Springer LNCS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) series. 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 Design by Contract development method. His experiences with object technology through the

Simula Simula is the name of two simulation 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. Syntactically, it is an approximate superset of ALGO ...

language, as well as early work on

abstract data types In computer science, an abstract data type (ADT) is a mathematical model for data types. An abstract data type is defined by its behavior (semantics) from the point of view of a ''user'', of the data, specifically in terms of possible values, p ...

and

formal specification In computer science, formal specifications are mathematically based techniques whose purpose are to help with the implementation of systems and software. They are used to describe a system, to analyze its behavior, and to aid in its design by verif ...

(including the

Z notation The Z notation is a formal specification language used for describing and modelling computing systems. It is targeted at the clear specification of computer programs and computer-based systems in general. History In 1974, Jean-Raymond Abria ...

), provided some of the background for the development of Eiffel.

Contributions

Meyer is known among other contributions for the following: * The concept of Design by Contract, highly influential as a design and programming methodology concept and a language mechanism present in such languages as the Java Modeling Language, Spec#, the UML's

Object Constraint Language The Object Constraint Language (OCL) is a declarative language describing rules applying to Unified Modeling Language (UML) models developed at IBM and is now part of the UML standard. Initially, OCL was merely a formal specification language ex ...

and Microsoft's Code Contracts. * The design of the Eiffel language, applicable to programming as well as design and requirements. * The early publication (in the first, 1988 edition of his '' Object-Oriented Software Construction'' book) of such widely used

design patterns ''Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software'' (1994) is a software engineering book describing software design patterns. The book was written by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides, with a forewo ...

as the command pattern (the basis for undo-redo mechanisms, i.e. CTRL-Z/CTRL-Y, in interactive systems) and the

bridge pattern The bridge pattern is a design pattern used in software engineering that is meant to ''"decouple an abstraction from its implementation so that the two can vary independently"'', introduced by the Gang of Four. The ''bridge'' uses encapsulation, a ...

. * The original design (in collaboration with

Jean-Raymond Abrial Jean-Raymond Abrial (born 1938) is a French computer scientist and inventor of the Z and B formal methods. Abrial's 1974 paper ''Data Semantics'' laid the foundation for a formal approach to Data Models; although not adopted directly by practit ...

and Steven Schuman) of the Z specification language. * His establishment of the connection between object-oriented programming and the concept of software reusability (in his 1987 paper ``Reusability: the Case for Object-Oriented Design''. * His critical analysis of the pros and cons of agile development and his development of software lifecycle and management models.

Awards

Meyer is a member of

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

and the French Academy of Technologies and a

Fellow of the ACM A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher educatio ...

. He has received honorary doctorates from ITMO University in Saint Petersburg, Russia (2004) and the

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for post-nominals) is a collegiate research university, located in the city of York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thirty departments and centres, co ...

, UK (2015). He was the first "senior award" winner of the AITO Dahl-Nygaard award in 2005. This prize, named after the two founders of object-oriented programming, is awarded annually to a senior and a junior researcher who has made significant technical contributions to the field of OOP. He is the 2009 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society

Harlan Mills Harlan D. Mills (May 14, 1919 – January 8, 1996) was Professor of Computer Science at the Florida Institute of Technology and founder of Software Engineering Technology, Inc. of Vero Beach, Florida (since acquired by Q-Labs). Mills' contr ...

award. In 2006, Meyer received the

Software System Award The ACM Software System Award is an annual award that honors people or an organization "for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts, in commercial acceptance, or both". It is awarded by ...

of the ACM for "impact on software quality" in recognition of the design of Eiffel.

Wikipedia hoax

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

German Wikipedia The German Wikipedia (german: Deutschsprachige Wikipedia) is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia. Founded on March 16, 2001, it is the second-oldest Wikipedia (after the English Wikipedi ...

'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. Meyer went on to publish a positive evaluation of Wikipedia,Bertrand Meyer: Defense and Illustration of Wikipedia, at
/ref> 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

External links

Bertrand Meyer home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meyer, Bertrand 1950 births Living people École Polytechnique alumni Academic staff of ETH Zurich Formal methods people Monash University faculty French computer scientists Software engineering researchers Programming language designers Programming language researchers Stanford University alumni University of California, Santa Barbara faculty Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Members of Academia Europaea Computer science writers Nancy-Université alumni Dahl–Nygaard Prize