The Generic programming reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Generic programming

In computer science, generics are a technique that allows one value to take different datatypes (so-called polymorphism) as long as certain contracts (so-called subtype) are kept. The programming style with it is called generic programming.

Among OOP languages, C++, D, BETA, Eiffel, Ada, and later versions of Java provides generic facility. In C++, templates support generics and popularized the notion of generics.

Uncommon, template metaprogramming is a way of making algorithms evaluate when your code is compiled.

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See also Partial evaluation

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