Some people should read the literature for design of other languages.
Or, perhaps they just need to escape the NIH (not invented here) syndrome...

From <http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2769630,00.html>

        Generics is controversial and has been widely debated inside and outside of Sun.
        Gosling said the concept is so complicated that no two developers could agree on
        exactly how it should be implemented. He and Sun Chief Scientist Bill Joy "got as
        close to physical violence as we've gotten," he said, because Joy wanted to slip
        Java for two or three years until Sun figured out generics. However, developers
        converged on an answer about two years ago, and then Sun waited while the issue
        wended its way through the Java Community Process. Gosling said reliability is
        critical to Java because it raises developer productivity, allowing them to
        "spend less of their lives fixing broken applications."

--
Terry Westley
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