Re: Inheritance versus Generics

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

Nick said

<<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.>>

Actually the light brushing here seems to be more on your side. Yes, the idea
of making packages first class is superficially appealing, and it certainly
was not "lighly brushed aside", but was on the contrary carefully examined
over a long period of time by a lot of people. In the light of that
discussion, the great majority of the DR's (really everyone except Tony
Luckham, who subsequently dropped out) decided that the added complexity
was not worth the functoinality, which we felt could be adfequately
obtained in other ways without introducing as much complexity.

So you may or may not agree with this, but should probably examine the
issue in more detail. it is a deep one!