Re:Why Pascal Is Not My Favorite Programming Language (1981)
by magicalhippo on Monday February 25, 2019 @05:27AM
(#19244551)
Delphi has compile-time generics, which is kind of a "worst of both worlds" approach. It has all the constraints of templates, but none of the benefits of run-time instantiated generics like .Net has.
For example you can't make a generic function that uses the + operator to add two parameterized elements together, because there's no way to constrain the types to only those which has the + operator defined. But unlike templates in C++, the compiler doesn't just try and see if it works but rather emits an error.
For example you can't make a generic function that uses the + operator to add two parameterized elements together, because there's no way to constrain the types to only those which has the + operator defined. But unlike templates in C++, the compiler doesn't just try and see if it works but rather emits an error.