[fpc-devel] Generics Basics

[John Briggs]

On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 10:00:49PM +0100, dannym wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Am Dienstag, den 08.11.2005, 18:10 -0200 schrieb Felipe Monteiro de
> Carvalho:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I am trying to understand what exactly generics are. I read the wiki
> > page, but there are lot's of code examples and very few explanations.
> > Can someone explain it to me in a (relatively) simple way?
> > 
> > What problem is it trying to solve?
> 
> It makes types parametrizable.
> 
Just my two cents worth:

To me generics should essentially make FPC a typeless language. i.e. everthing
is an object and you just pass messages between objects, ala Smalltalk. How it
is implemented is a moot point because at the top level you shouldn't be able 
to see the implementation of the objects.

The one thing that does concern me is why implement generics if you fail to 
implement the late binding of the objects which to me is the greatest gain of
generic programming.

Feel free to shoot me down in flames as I have not been following this
discussion fully to understand all of its details

John
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