Re: Inheritance versus Generics

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Mats said, replying to me

<<> I assume you are aware of all the subtle semantic problems in doing this.
> This is an issue that has been discussed very extensively during the
> design process, and the issues are well known and well understood, and
> the consensus was that package types are simply too much additional
> complexity ...

I have done some extensive work on that topic (package types as
classes), and I disagree. You can find my proposal at
<http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Team/MW/Ada-Extensions/Ada-Extensions.html>>>>

I think your language is a little imprecise here, I think you are saying that
you disagree with the consensus, not that anything I said is wrong (this
issue WAS debated extensively -- extensively enough that I certainly don't
feel like any more technical talk on it :-) -- and there was a consensus
that it was a bad idea.

Sure there is a small (very noisy :-) minority that disagreed, but it 
was a very small minority (the notable member of this minority was
Tony Luckham, if you want to track down a kindred spirit on this issue).
 (and of course there was the Intel compiler ...)