Generics ... it depends on how they are implemented.  I'd much prefer functions
that could tell the kind of value they were supposed to return, and selected
the correct function from a full match of the parameters.  So one could, e.g.,
distinguish between:
StringBuffer s = new ("this is a StringBuffer");
    and
String s = new ("this is a String");

Forwarding of dependencies (was that Pizza also?  Or was it Jamie?) would also
be a very nice feature, so that one could have a sort of sideways inheritance.
Very useful in systems that don't permit multiple inheritance.

Then, perhaps, generics.

Speeding things up wouldn't hurt either.

John English wrote:

> nabbasi@pacbell.net.NOSPAM wrote:
> >
> > In article <39A991F3.A8D8BED7@easystreet.com>, Al says...
> >
> > >All three of these languages, M2, M3, and Ada, now support generics,
> > >and that gives them a big advantage over Delphi for coding without doing
> > >aribtrary conversions between data types.  In Delphi, the generic type
> > >stored by the standard VCL collection classes is the Pointer, and the
> > >program must cast it to whatever type it really represents.
> >
> > Well, generics are nice, but Java do not have them, and it seems
> > that half the world now program in Java. So, I do not think that Borland
> > delphi not having generics is such a big deal for most people.
>
> Generics are at the top of the Java wishlist, and you can get a Java
> extension (Generic Java) that implements generics in Java from
> http://www.cis.unisa.edu.au/~pizza/gj/ (or from
> http://burks.bton.ac.uk/burks/language/java/).
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>  John English              | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
>  Senior Lecturer           | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je
>  Dept. of Computing        | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS **
>  University of Brighton    |    -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk
> -----------------------------------------------------------------

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