3 ms·
The CLU book (Liskov & Guttag, 1986) talks about "parameterized types". Liskov's 1996 essay in History of Programming Languages II describes the feature under t
by adonovan 5y ago
The CLU book (Liskov & Guttag, 1986) talks about "parameterized types". Liskov's 1996 essay in History of Programming Languages II describes the feature under the heading "parametric polymorphism".
The Modula-3 book (Harbison, 1992) has a chapter (Ch.9, p.163) called "Generics". I suspect this derives from Ada (1983?), which used "generic" as an adjective for all kinds of parameterized constructs, including functions, packages, and types.
The first design for generics in Java (Pizza by Odersky & Wadler, 1997) uses the term "parametric polymorphism", which was pretty standard in academia at the time, and originates from Fundamental Concepts in Programming Languages (Strachey, 1967).