Re: [Haskell-cafe] Very silly

Jason Dagit wrote:

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 8:32 PM, Tommy M. McGuire mailto:mcguire@crsr.net> wrote: Java (and presumably C#) "generics" are very much like a weakened version of normal parametric polymorphism.

I'm curious, in what way are they weakened?

That's a good question. :-) I picked up the idea while reading Java Generics and Collections, but I can no longer find the part that *gave* me the impression. I suspect that it is due to the type erasure vs. array runtime typing issues. It may be the case that basic generics are identical to plain parametric polymorphism, and that the wildcard expressions attempt to serve the same purpose (with considerable divergence) as type classes and existential types. But I don't know since my brains have apparently turned to oatmeal. -- Tommy M. McGuire mcguire@crsr.net