Re:Functional Programming in Go with Generics
by cben on Friday May 28, 2021 @10:30AM
(#27315742)
On a type to be named _separately_.
To-be-named-at-runtime is simply dynamic typing. It's polymorphism without static typing.
Generics based on type erasure, e.g. Java, wrap that with a type system hoping* to prove safety at compile time, yet compile to a single dynamicly typed implementation, that does not use this type info at runtime.
Generics based on code generation / specialization, e.g. C++, generate distinct run-time implementations with the type hard-coded.
(Though you can plug in dynamic typing by making the hard-coded type a pointer.)
In C++ this is more than optimization, it's semantics — you can specify distinct behavior for specific types.
JIT compilers can start from a single dynamic-dispatch implementation and generate specialized implemetations for some types, bridging the divide.
But in any case, the common meaning of "generics" is not merely polymorphism, it's polymorphism plus a type system where you _name_ the type you're gonna use.
To-be-named-at-runtime is simply dynamic typing. It's polymorphism without static typing.
Generics based on type erasure, e.g. Java, wrap that with a type system hoping* to prove safety at compile time, yet compile to a single dynamicly typed implementation, that does not use this type info at runtime.
Generics based on code generation / specialization, e.g. C++, generate distinct run-time implementations with the type hard-coded. (Though you can plug in dynamic typing by making the hard-coded type a pointer.) In C++ this is more than optimization, it's semantics — you can specify distinct behavior for specific types.
JIT compilers can start from a single dynamic-dispatch implementation and generate specialized implemetations for some types, bridging the divide.
But in any case, the common meaning of "generics" is not merely polymorphism, it's polymorphism plus a type system where you _name_ the type you're gonna use.
* https://3fx.ch/typing-is-hard.html#java