Publication

Making the future safe for the past: Adding Genericity to the Java Programming Language

Martin Odersky
1998
Conference Papers

Abstract

We present GJ, a design that extends the Java programming language with generic types and methods. These are both explained and implemented by translation into the unextended language. The translation closely mimics the way generics are emulated by programmers: it erases all type parameters, maps type variables to their bounds, and inserts casts where needed. Some subtleties of the translation are caused by the handling of overriding. GJ increases expressiveness and safety: code utilizing generic libraries is no longer buried under a plethora of casts, and the corresponding casts inserted by the translation are guaranteed to not fail. GJ is designed to be fully backwards compatible with the current Java language, which simplifies the transition from non-generic to generic programming. In particular, one can retrofit existing library classes with generic interfaces without changing their code.

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/ffec0b38-d4d5-4344-8436-a8a1da66e5e3

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Martin Odersky
1998
Conference Papers

Abstract

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/ffec0b38-d4d5-4344-8436-a8a1da66e5e3

About this result

Related concepts (32)

Generic programming

Generic programming is a style of computer programming in which algorithms are written in terms of data types to-be-specified-later that are then instantiated when needed for specific types provided as parameters. This approach, pioneered by the ML programming language in 1973, permits writing common functions or types that differ only in the set of types on which they operate when used, thus reducing duplicate code. Generics was introduced to the main-stream programming with Ada in 1977 and then with templates in C++ it became part of the repertoire of professional library design.

Java (programming language)

Java is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is a general-purpose programming language intended to let programmers write once, run anywhere (WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Java without the need to recompile. Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode that can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of the underlying computer architecture.

C Sharp (programming language)

C# (pronounced ) is a general-purpose high-level programming language supporting multiple paradigms. C# encompasses static typing, strong typing, lexically scoped, imperative, declarative, functional, generic, object-oriented (class-based), and component-oriented programming disciplines. The C# programming language was designed by Anders Hejlsberg from Microsoft in 2000 and was later approved as an international standard by Ecma (ECMA-334) in 2002 and ISO/IEC (ISO/IEC 23270) in 2003. Microsoft introduced C# along with .