Re: Inheritance versus Generics

["Nick Roberts" <Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com>]

Michael F Brenner <mfb@mbunix.mitre.org> wrote in article
<5k5suu$bhj@top.mitre.org> an excellent article about arrays of packages,
and packages as First Class Objects. Many thanks, Michael.

I would wholeheartedly agree that it is a great pity that Ada 95 did not
include some sort of facility for the dynamic manipulation of package
binding. Naturally, this facility would imply a variety of implementation
difficulties. It would be difficult (or impossible) to implement
dynamically bindable packages as efficiently as statically bound ones.
Nevertheless, the speed penalty would, in many cases, be acceptable, and
the advantages of such a facility would often be considerable.

This may sound surprising, coming from such a technologically conservative
person as myself, but I think I would go so far as to say that this is a
serious omission, and not one to be lightly brushed aside.

Nick.