From: <adaworks@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Re: What was the first programming language to use 'generics'?...
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 07:03:44 GMT
Date: 2005-08-23T07:03:44+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <kTzOe.783$yo7.336@newssvr23.news.prodigy.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: odeig19vmplnbt67s3s148eb4mqrk9vujd@4ax.com
"Dennis Lee Bieber" <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:odeig19vmplnbt67s3s148eb4mqrk9vujd@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 21 Aug 2005 17:33:19 GMT, <adaworks@sbcglobal.net> declaimed the
> following in comp.lang.ada:
>
>
> > "seven dwarfs." COBOL even has a SORT verb as part of the language
> > that one could think of as a generic capability.
> >
> > So, the first high-order language to have a generic capability might well
> > be COBOL.
> >
> This could be tricky... I think some implementations of the SORT
> verb assumed an external sort program existed to do the actual sorting
> after the parameters were translated.
>
Exactly so. The algorithms of the SORT verb were in a separate facility.
This facility (program) was a generic program. One simply stated the
description of the data and let the behavior of the sort work on that
data. This is exactly what most generic units do in Ada.
Richard Riehle
prev parent reply other threads:[~2005-08-23 7:03 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2005-08-18 9:18 OT: What was the first programming language to use 'generics'? Martin Dowie
2005-08-18 11:29 ` Jean-Pierre Rosen
2005-08-19 16:25 ` Charles Lindsey
2005-08-18 21:11 ` David Trudgett
2005-08-18 21:36 ` Robert A Duff
2005-08-18 23:43 ` David Trudgett
2005-08-19 2:13 ` OT: What was the first programming language to use Larry Kilgallen
2005-08-19 9:44 ` David Trudgett
2005-08-19 14:22 ` jayessay
2005-08-19 15:08 ` OT: What was the first programming language to use 'generics'? Robert A Duff
2005-08-19 18:09 ` jayessay
2005-08-19 15:42 ` jayessay
2005-08-19 2:47 ` Jeffrey R. Carter
2005-08-21 17:33 ` adaworks
[not found] ` <odeig19vmplnbt67s3s148eb4mqrk9vujd@4ax.com>
2005-08-23 7:03 ` adaworks [this message]
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