the corner office

a blog, by Colin Pretorius

Angle bracket hell

Dear Sun and associated smart people,

Generics are a nice feature and it's really nice not having to do all that horrible casting anymore. Over the past year I've come to appreciate the clarity that something like

HashMap<Integer,List<Vertex<String>>> map = new HashMap<Integer,List<Vertex<String>>>();

brings to my code. I am also very glad that I've avoided the 2 detectable-during-testing crashes I would probably have encountered if I'd stuck with non-type-safe code, like in the 1.4 days and before.

Now granted, any feature that makes Java developers feel as syntax-savvy and hardcore as C++ developers has a certain cool factor, and deep down I do agree that generics are an improvement, but at least C++ has typedefs. I'm just saying...

Yours,
Colin

{2006.08.14 16:40}

Comments:

1. Leslie Viljoen (2006.08.17 - 13:13) #

Dear Colin

I you haven't yet tried Ruby, your time is up. You may no longer apply, you've stretched patience too far and you have now permanently doomed yourself to a Javary grave.

Sorry...

Yours,
Leslie

Last hope: http://onestepback.org/articles/10things/

2. Colin (2006.08.26 - 23:03) #

Yep, you're right... That link looks pretty interesting... I'll take more of a look, promise :-)

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