Suggestions for Java Generics Semantics in Java Version 7.0 _ Resurrected

[Ismael Juma]

On Thu, 2009-06-18 at 11:06 +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
> Obviously, this heavily constrains the solution space.  In the end,
> Java 5 bytecode could not run on pre-Java 5 VMs, so this requirement
> was somewhat pointless, wasn't it?

Neal answered this question in a blog entry a few years ago:

http://gafter.blogspot.com/2004/09/puzzling-through-erasure-answer.html 

There are obvious disagreements on how important and/or feasible reified
generics on the JVM are. For example, a blog entry from Peter Ahé (then
working on javac at Sun) paints a different picture than what has been
said in this thread:

"The problem is the lack of reification. In other words, the lack of
runtime type-information about generic types (at runtime, you cannot
tell an ArrayList<String> from a ArrayList<Integer>). We need to do
something about that. It is indeed time to erase erasure! 

In the next weeks I'll explain what it buys us and how we can accomplish
it."[1]

Unfortunately, Peter soon left to work on Newspeak and we never got to
see what his proposed solution was. :)

Best,
Ismael

[1] http://blogs.sun.com/ahe/entry/reification