Question re. FSF GNU SmallEiffel vs. C and C++

[mike corbeil ordinary user account <mcorbeil at NetRevolution dot com>]

Does anyone know anything about the comparison or where valid and
authoritative information in this respect may be found?  

I know that there's a SmallEiffel email list or faq, however it'd be
nice to have authoritative information which is not so closely tied to
SmallEiffel, itself.

What I've read so far says that it, i.e., Eiffel, is about the best oopl
available, supposedly better than C++, and may be used instead of C, as
a better alternative to either of these.  

However, after building SmallEiffel last night and reading through some
of the documentation and other files, I learned that the SmallEiffel
compiler translates the code to or into C, followed (obv.) by compiling
the C code.  This seems tentatively or possibly okay, or even good, if
it avoids problems people have with C++, and C; however, this also means
that SmallEiffel is more of a macro language than a real one, albeit
modelled after or based on the Eiffel language.

Because SmallEiffel uses gcc as the default compiler, I thought this
question might possibly be okay to ask, here.

mcorbeil@netrevolution.com