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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: GNAT GPL Edition - on the plus side
Date: 15 Oct 2005 10:45:39 -0400
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Date: 2005-10-15T10:45:39-04:00
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"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> writes:

> "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message
> news:b4p2ksjzkv4m.6ghazx68f8js.dlg@40tude.net...
> > Anyway, generics and templates are inherently a mess, but that is another
> > story. (:-))
> 
> Perhaps because we haven't seen any crying need. I, for one would prefer to
> reduce the need for generics than to pile on more features. You have said in
> the past that generics are unnecessary with good OOP, and I tend to agree.

Could either or both of you explain why generics are unnecessary
(i.e. what changes to Ada's OOP would make them unnecessary).

In particular, I want to be able to have a container type tied to the
type of its elements (perhaps class-wide).  If I have a "sequence of
T'Class", and I put something in it, and take it back out, I don't want
to lose the fact that this element is somewhere in the T'Class
hierarchy.  Generics seem to work well for that.

How would you define the "sequence" abstraction without generics?

- Bob