[fpc-pascal] Generic type declaration example versus manual.

[Anthony Walter]

On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 6:15 AM, Jonas Maebe <jonas.maebe at elis.ugent.be> wrote:
>
> Generics were developed in parallel in FPC and in Delphi, and both came up with a different syntax.
> The incompatibility was there from the start, it wasn't created afterwards.

Jonas,

I am not trying to be a jerk or anything, but yes, I assure you I read
your replies.  I say this because you are repeating the same logic  as
if I hadn't heard it before.

For your benefit I'll include my a quote myself from last time we went
down this path.

Hopefully we can move past the "who did what when" discussion, and
take up "what makes more sense, and should we try to be compatible"
discussion.

Quoting myself from a recent discussion:

One thing I've noticed about the FPC community which has me a somewhat
apprehensive is a bit of a particular attitude I've picked up on.

A few times now I've read comments by or had conversations with people
in the FPC community who have explained incompatibilities away using
the phrase:

"FreePascal did this before something else so we shouldn't change"

Forgetting the whole argument about who was actually first, I have to
ask what difference does it make?

Why does doing something first make it written in stone. It seems a
bit childish to say, "No way, I way here first, I won't budge. You
move."

Really, that attitude is quite the turn off.

There there these incompatibilities causing me to avoid language
features. I'd like to use them but just won't (Operator overloading
and generics come to mind), mostly because I really don't want to have
ifdefs all over the place.

In my opinion, there is an incompatibility. Fix it.