[otj-users] Develop Teams independent of base classes

[Stephan Herrmann]

> Have you ever thought about passing the playing base class as type
> parameter when instantiating a team? E.g. like the following:
> 
> public team class MyTeam <T> {
>   protected class MyRole playedBy T { .. }
>   ..
> }
> 
> MyTeam t = new MyTeam<BaseClass>()
That's an interesting idea ;-)

Some questions:
+ What benefits do you expect from declaring "playedBy T"?
   It seems that the role still can't define any method bindings,
   without knowing its actual base class?
+ What benefits do you see in instantiating the team type with a type parameter
   rather than using inheritance? Do you have any use case in mind, where this
   would help?
 
> Do you consider it to be feasible on OT/J?
My quick answer without analyzing all the details is:
It _could_ be feasible, but it will definitely be hard to realize.
I guess the whole thing would make sense only if we support

  public interface ISomeBase {
     void foo();
  }
  public team class MyTeam <T extends ISomeBase> {
     protected class MyRole playedBy T {
         foo -> foo; // base class is known to have a foo method due to type bound ISomeBase
     }
     ..
  }

How would this differ from

  public team class MyTeam {
     protected class MyRole playedBy ISomeBase {
         foo -> foo; 
     }
     ..
  }

?

Both variants require that we could bind a role to a base _interface_,
which is an open issue mentioned even in the OTJLD §2.1.1.

If we come to the conclusion that parametric teams are a very desirable feature,
this would definitely raise the priority of playedBy interface.

Stephan