| Home | Biography | Speaking | Articles | Books | Music |
OK, Rocky, that’s interesting (or strange - take your pick ;) ). But, the more I thought about it, I wondered what the point of this code was! Why not eliminate generics altogether and just do this:
public class BaseClass
{
public int GetBaseAnswer() { return 42; }
}
public class StrangeClass : BaseClass
{
public int GetStrangeAnswer() { return 123321; }
}
public class TestStrangeMethod
{
public void Test()
{
StrangeMethod extendedBaseClass = new StrangeClass();
int baseAnswer = extendedBaseClass.GetBaseAnswer();
int strangeAnswer = extendedBaseClass.GetStrangeAnswer();
}
}
I understand your points, but (and remember, it’s late when I posted this) I just don’t see what generics adds in terms of extensibility and flexibility to the code I give that doesn’t use generics. There may be something to what you’re doing in terms of the factory pattern but I’m not seeing it. [1]
By the way, my original code snippet was an attempt to create subclasses of a base class without having to physically code the subclasses in full (dynamic subclasses, if you will). I think this is something you can do in C++, but I’m not a C++ programmer so I’m not sure about this (I’ll try to verify this).
[1] I’m sure as soon as I post this I’ll “see the light”. Usually when I get confused about something I have to puzzle over it and write about it, but only until I post my question do I “get it”, and then I feel really stupid :).
Published: 10.21.2004 12:11:52 AM CST