Generic collections

[SilverWarior]

I'm also gainst the use of generics:
1. As it was sad before using generics greatly increases the size of executable.
2. Generics offer much lower performance. I maself rather go and gwite several thousands lines of code more than have mush poorer peroformance.
3. Debuging of code that uses generics is much harder.
4. Delphi compliler is known to sometimes simply fail in compiting generics code. This was reported long ago and still hasn't been fixed entirely.

[pitfiend]

My position is against using anything that can impact negatively on performance. Using generics is a bad idea, the support on delphi is not very stable neither optimal and fpc is a mess. If we want to make an engine solid, stable and optimal we need things that provide that, also we are not building this for the casual programer and we'll try to make as much documentation as we can provide. BTW, tlist component, a critical component for nearby any kind of list is build with pointers.

[AthenaOfDelphi]

I've found generics to be useful and reliable in Delphi. I can't comment on performance, but I have no reason to suspect it's poor given the generic part of this is handled at compile time.

So, how about we do what we would probably all do if we encountered this question in our day jobs... lets establish some facts. The key questions here seem to be:-

Do generics have an adverse affect on the size of the compiled binaries?
Are generics stable in both Delphi and FPC? - This might be tricky to prove one way or the other
What are the differences between Delphi and FPC generics?

Personally, I have no problem using them, but it's not just my choice, so does someone (or a collection of people) want to take on a task and get some answers? Then when we have a realistic view of the current state of affairs we can make an educated decision. This of course won't answer the question about whether we drop the idea of supporting D7 which is still very popular I believe. But, the technical side may make the decision easier... if the differences between FPC and Delphi are too great for example, regardless of the other factors, generics would be a non-starter if they are going to need lots of conditionals and such, but then depending on just how different they are we may be able to get around it by creating compiler specific versions of the classes we're talking about.

So, plan of action... let's establish the answers to the key questions and then make a decision based on hard facts.