Re: Do people who use Ada also use ocaml or F#?

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> writes:

> "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> writes:
>
>> How do you execute a generic body? Testable are generic instances.
>
>     You can't test a generic without instantiating it.
>     
>     You can't test a procedure without calling it.
>     
>     You can't test an abstract type without declaring
>     a concrete type, and some objects of that type.
>
> What am I missing?

To truly test a generic, you need to test with all possible
instantiations.

Or at least with a representative subset. If the generic parameters are
well structured, it may be possible to show that a few instances are
sufficient.

That's much more effort than testing a single concrete procedure.

It may be worth it, of course; I often use generics precisely to reduce
testing burden.

-- 
-- Stephe