I was glancing through the latest OOPSLA proceedings, and there
is an interesting article on adding generics/templates to the Java Language
with a real implementation -- by Sun and Stanford researchers.

        "Adding Type Parameterization to the Java Language"

And they actually do site Ada all over the place, together with C++ and ML.
Too bad the references it to
        [US 80] US Dept of Defense. Ref manual for the Ada programming language
-- they just won't let that DoD reference be lost.. Versus say "ANSI/ISO/IEC...1995".


So JAVA (Just Another Version of Ada) is getting one step closer:-)


One statement on C++ was interesting:
        "C++ templates are compiled without statically checking the use of member functions,
         in part because of the complexity of determining in advance how a reference
        to a function might be eventually resolved. Instead, type checks are made
        later, at link time, when the actual type parameter is determined
        and a semantic instance is created".

The paper doesn't mention how much more powerful (and complex)
the Ada compilers are to be able to
statically check this.


Scott Moody
Team Ada