Sather

The main complaints the original authors of Sather had with Eiffel was that it was not available in a free version and that its performance was slow. Sather is more strongly typed than Eiffel in the Wirthian sense and takes on some of the features of Oberon, it was quite popular for a while but interest in the language waned after the popularisation of Java as with all other object oriented languages, but also Eiffel itself over time has gained some of the characteristics that the authors of Sather were aiming for.

There were a few dialects of Sather available, the main two were Sather-K developed by the Institut für Programmstrukturen und Datenorganisation (IPD) at the University of Karlsruhe and the original version developed at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) at the University of California, the Sather-K version got mothballed after the IPD turned its attention to Java and the ICSI version died a quiet death after being handed over to the Free Software Foundation (GNU) for further development.

There was at one time a EMX Sather port available for OS/2 but it has been lost in time, you can actually compile and run the ICSI, Sather-K and GNU versions and run it but since there are no OS/2 bindings available anymore that is a bit pointless exercise. QUT in Australia, the people behind Gardens Point Modula-2 and Gardens Point Oberon-2 did at one point have a Sather front end for the compiler kit, but apparently never released it to the public. The main advantage Sather still has over Eiffel is that it is slightly simpler and thus easier to learn, but as Eiffel is very easy to learn as well the difference is not great.

Publications

 * Dr. Dobb's Language Sourcebook Winter 1994: The Sather Programming Language

Links

 * Sather-K compiler at SourceForge - Windows version only
 * Sather-K sources at Halle University - Only a later version for Windows and Linux developer at Halle, the original Sather-K version is lost in time.