[pjmlp]

We certainly paid for our compilers and interpreters, even to learn a new programming language.

Alternative was making our own ones, from code listings.

That rigour is useful, having learned Eiffel, coming from Wirth languages background, reading Code Complete, completely influenced my way of writing C and I regularly used all the nice VSC++ ASSERT macros variants for pointer and argument validation.

Also adopted code contracts in Java and .NET years later.

Coming back to Eiffel, languages need a killer use case for business to adopt them, so they end up only having customers on domains where companies are required to take quality seriously, like high integrity computing.