[Haskell-cafe] SIGPLAN Programming Languages Software Award

[Richard O'Keefe]

On 9/06/2011, at 8:02 PM, Yves Parès wrote:

> Were templates an original feature of C++ or did they appear in a revision of the langage ?

The latter.  "C with classes" did not have multiple inheritance, exceptions, or templates.

Note that C++ templates are *not* the same kind of animal as Eiffel generics or Java generics
or Ada generics or Haskell parametric polymorphism.  The C++ template language lets you do
type-level functional programming, and different instances of a common "type constructor" may
in fact have quite different internal structures.  C++ templates are NOT 'merely keywords
around .. parametric polymorphism', they are a far more dangerous thing.