Re: What was the first programming language to use 'generics'?...

[<adaworks@sbcglobal.net>]

"Martin Dowie" <martin.dowie@baesystems.com> wrote in message
news:43045094_1@glkas0286.greenlnk.net...
> ...and were they called 'generics'?
>
> Not Ada but I just know /someone/ here will know this! ;-)
>
My first exposure to generics was with generic sort programs.

Consider, in the early sort programs supplied for operating systems
we had a set of behaviors already programmed.   All we had to do
was supply a description of the data.   Ada generics are a lot like
that.  We reuse behavior while describing the data to be processed
with that behavior.

With those sort facilities, we could even add some additional code for
what we called an "own code" sort.  Typically the "own code" was
used to accomplish some special input or output procedures on the
data.  This is analogous to generic formal subprograms or (in Ada 95)
generic formal package parameters.

My earliest recollection of this was for the IBM 1401 where our "own
code" was written in Autocoder.  Later, I discovered this same capability
was on other platforms, including the entire 360/370 series (along with
those that used IBM's operating systems), and all the machines from the
"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.

Richard Riehle