gamedevlists-general

[GD-General] Simulating constrained genericity in C++

[Brian H. <bri...@py...>]

http://sivut.koti.soon.fi/epulkkin/instructive/simulating-constrained-ge
nericity.html

I had no idea there was so much crap involved with generic programming.
Eiffel so far seems like the best implementation I've seen, but the
language (and implementations) has so many other issues that it doesn't
look feasible for tool development.

So back to Java and Obj-C I go =)

Brian

P.S. After looking at the collection classes in STL, Java, Eiffel and
Obj-C, I'm surprised there hasn't been some reasonable paper written
that describes the architectural decisions each made, and what language
specific features enabled/denied certain aspects.  Lack of constrained
genericity seems like a royal bitch in C++; same with a lack of
introspection, reflection and single reliable hierarchies (e.g. in Java
and Obj-C you can query an object for its class; in Java all object's
have a "toString" method; etc.).

[GD-General] Re: Simulating constrained genericity in C++

[Jesse J. <jes...@mi...>]

At 11:17 AM -0800 12/26/01, Brian Hook wrote:
>http://sivut.koti.soon.fi/epulkkin/instructive/simulating-constrained-ge
>nericity.html
>
>I had no idea there was so much crap involved with generic programming.

This approach is fundamentally wrong: unlike Eiffel C++ doesn't use 
classes to model attributes like being assignable or addable. Because 
of this templates work more like objects in a dynamic language and 
rely on name commonality. Of course, in practice there are some 
problems with doing this (like bizarre error messages). Check out 
<http://www.boost.org/libs/concept_check/concept_check.htm> for a 
solution that fits in better with C++.

>Eiffel so far seems like the best implementation I've seen, but the
>language (and implementations) has so many other issues that it doesn't
>look feasible for tool development.

Eiffel reminds me of Modula-2: a really nice implementation of 
yesterdays paradigm. But it just doesn't offer enough over C++ to be 
compelling (for me at least).

   -- Jesse