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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: Java vs C++
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Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2011 12:26:36 +1300
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In message <iil9uk$b6m$1@news.eternal-september.org>, Joshua Cranmer wrote:

> On 02/05/2011 11:13 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> They are different things in Java as well.
> 
> The hell they aren't. In Java, there is only one instance of
> LinkedList::add(T object). In C++, there are as many instances of
> std::list<T>::front as times you use it.
> 
> Try, for example, implementing both List<String> and List<Character> in
> the same class. Java will tell you that you cannot do it. C++, on the
> other hand, wouldn't bat an eye.
> 
>> The only time they become the same thing is in “erasures” and “raw
>> types”, which are backward-compatibility mechanisms introduced to avoid
>> breaking existing code that doesn’t know about generics.
> 
> I think Java would likely have gone with much the same syntax even if
> generics had been introduced in the beginning.
> 
>> And then, of course, the language goes on to use exactly that deprecated
>> syntax as the recommended way of accessing static members.
> 
> It's not the same syntax. List<String> is the type of a specific
> instance, while the class still remains List.

List<String> is a class, not an instance. In something like

    List<String> L;

it is L that is the instance.

See, how can you try to tell me what the difference is between Java and C++, 
when you don’t understand it yourself?