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

Making the future safe for the past: Adding Genericity to the Java Programming Language (1998)

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by Gilad Bracha , Martin Odersky , David Stoutamire , Philip Wadler

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Datum	Value	Source
TITLE	Making the future safe for the past: Adding Genericity to the Java Programming Language	user correction
AUTHOR NAME	Gilad Bracha	user correction
AUTHOR AFFIL	Sun Microsystems	user correction
AUTHOR NAME	Martin Odersky	user correction
AUTHOR NAME	David Stoutamire	user correction
AUTHOR AFFIL	Sun Microsystems	user correction
AUTHOR NAME	Philip Wadler	user correction
AUTHOR AFFIL	Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies,	user correction
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. An implementation of GJ has been written in GJ, and is freely available on the web.	user correction
YEAR	1998	user correction - Legacy Corrections
CITATIONS	24 found	ParsCit 1.0