Re: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

[Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>]

Robert C. Leif wrote:
> Microsoft is imitating Ada generics in its proposed next version of C#.

On the referenced page, they lie and dissemble about C++ templates.

You are right about them imitating Ada generics, although I don't see
anything like generic formal pacakges which Ada uses to great effect.
They are not imitating C++'s template specialization abilities, so they
will lack any template metaprogramming capability.

It seems clear to me that in both the Java and C# cases, generics are
being added as an afterthought by people who don't really understand
them.

> Microsoft is now explaining what is wrong with Java.

That's rather like me "explaining" what's wrong with Ada.

> This again demonstrates that those who switched from Ada to Java
 > did not do it for good technological reasons.

Were there that many people who did this? Anyway, perhaps there were
enough good technological reasons to switch that the lack of generics
was outweighed.