Hi, Simon.

>When C# first came out I remember reading a discussion on www.eiffel.com that C# was basical a renamed version of Eiffel. If I understand correctly Bertrand Meyer and others from Eiffel served in some capacity in C#'s creation.

It has just a slight influence from Eiffel, but there is not even a hint about Contracts, for example, and the C# community (following the Java path, truly) is going the Unit Testing (or even Test--Driven Development) way.

As I see it (and this is just an amateur point of view), C# is an ellaboration over a lot of language research, but it mixes the chance to create a language from the scratch (like academic groups usually do) with a pragmatic approach (as expected from something coming from a corporation). Well, I like the result, at least. 8-)