Generics: Just Say No

Subject: Generics: Just Say No
From: Chris Hanson <email@hidden>
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 15:56:06 -0600

I'd like to preemptively suggest that generics/templates have no place in a Smalltalk-derived language. They only belong in type-paranoid languages like C++; they don't even really belong in Java, though Java's getting them because the C++-heads managed to clamor for them loudly enough.

I think instead of generics/templates, Objective-C deserves something more akin to Smalltalk blocks (similar to Lisp lambdas). These present a completely different way of working with collections; instead of treating collections as almost meaningless containers, it allows you to treat them as objects in their own right that can do things to the things they contain.

-- Chris

--
Chris Hanson <email@hidden>
bDistributed.com, Inc.
Outsourcing Vendor Evaluation
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Cocoa Developer Training
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