Far from being the ponderous, slow language that many fear, Eiffel-- at least the SmallEiffel implementation-- is a powerful, efficient tool. In a significant majority of the programs, Eiffel allowed me to produce a smaller, faster executable in less development time than C++. Add to this the lower overhead (no need for complex makefiles, no manual #includes, no defects relating to .h/.cpp parity, stronger typechecking, better stack dumps, stronger support for contracts...) and I can find no compelling reason to use C++ as a primary development language. When system-level control is necessary, all Eiffel compilers that I'm aware of offer the ability to drop into C, giving both the ability for broad-base application development and fine control when necessary.
I am extremely impressed, although somewhat disturbed that the language is used so little. It seems to offer significant gains with few faults except for (and this is significant to many) little industry acceptance. In any case, unless I have compelling reasons to the contrary, I plan on using Eiffel as my primary development language for future large projects.