Well the ironic part is that the official eiffel compiler compiles the eiffel code down to C, which is then compiled again into assembly. So technically speaking eiffel still relies on C... Note that its not very optimized C either, its much slower than Java for most of the stuff I tried (with contracts disabled).
Said compiler also happens to be terribly buggy and unreliable: The author still teaches the CS "Introduction to programming" class at my university with this language and every year students struggle with the language and the obscure IDE. Also don't know anybody that ever wrote a line of Eiffel again after that class even though the idea with contracts is kind of interesting.
Summa summarum: Best language constructs don't help if your basic tools are broken and make it a pain to write in that language.
Said compiler also happens to be terribly buggy and unreliable: The author still teaches the CS "Introduction to programming" class at my university with this language and every year students struggle with the language and the obscure IDE. Also don't know anybody that ever wrote a line of Eiffel again after that class even though the idea with contracts is kind of interesting.
Summa summarum: Best language constructs don't help if your basic tools are broken and make it a pain to write in that language.