Why C++/CLI Supports both Templates for CLI Types and the CLI Generic Mechanism

Stan Lippman s BLog Why C CLI Supports both Templates for CLI Types | Outdoor Decor

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:30:58 GMT

PingBack from http://outdoordecoration.info/story.php?id=3366

Topics about Tour-eiffel | Why C++/CLI Supports both Templates for CLI Types and the CLI Generic Mechanism

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:54:07 GMT

PingBack from http://tour-eiffel.linkedz.info/2004/08/05/why-ccli-supports-both-templates-for-cli-types-and-the-cli-generic-mechanism/

D?velopper en C++ ? - Page 4 | hilpers

D?velopper en C++ ? - Page 4 | hilpers — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:22:34 GMT

PingBack from http://www.hilpers.fr/397421-developper-en-c/4

Generics

Being Scott Densmore — Sat, 06 Nov 2004 01:28:00 GMT

Blog link of the week 32

Daniel Moth — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 18:32:00 GMT

http://www.zen13120.zen.co.uk/Blog/2004/08/blog-link-of-week-32-was-mistakenly-33.html

re: Why C++/CLI Supports both Templates for CLI Types and the CLI Generic Mechanism

stan lippman — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 19:20:00 GMT

well, i don't think we have enough experience with generics to be so dismissive. the real benefit of generics right now, however, are (a) MSIL/meta-data support, (b) cross-assembly visibility [templates are internal to an assembly], and, of course, (c) cross-language visibility.

re: Why C++/CLI Supports both Templates for CLI Types and the CLI Generic Mechanism

Nemanja Trifunovic — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 12:18:00 GMT

Not if that "ease of use" comes at the expense of power and flexibility. With generics, it is just not possible to make libraries like Loki, MTL, most Boost libraries...

Generics are great for making type-safe collections, but that's (almost) it. That is the price for its "simplicity".

re: Why C++/CLI Supports both Templates for CLI Types and the CLI Generic Mechanism

LDC — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 05:34:00 GMT

But when C++ is easier to use, there will be more people to write libraries, isn't it?

re: Why C++/CLI Supports both Templates for CLI Types and the CLI Generic Mechanism

stan lippman — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 03:11:00 GMT

thank you for writing.

Complexity of templates

Nemanja Trifunovic — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 12:37:00 GMT

I would just like to comment on complexity of templates as a reason to use generics instead.

IMO, there are two distinct groups of people that use templates: those who write template libraries, and those who use template libraries.

Now, writing template libraries is tough. Templates used in this manner are complex, hard to debug, and often library writers use horrible hacks to work around some limitations of templates. However, only a small minority of C++ programmers ever gets a chance to be in that roles, and those who do are masters like Alexandrescu, Stepanov, Maddock, etc - they are not afraid of "complexities".

On the other hand, template library can (and indeed, often do) expose clean, logical, easy to use interface to application programmers. When you use e.g. Loki you don't really meet any of those "terribly complex" aspects of template programming - the burden was on the author of the library.

Therefore, I would say that all this talk about "complex templates" and "simple generics" is in practice a non-issue for the vast majority of programmers. The only "real-workld" problem with using template libraries I can think of is not-quite-readable compile error messages. It seems that generics are better in this regard. As for two phase name lookup and other subtleties, only a small number of people ever need to care about them.