Before we dive into the technical details, let’s start with a quick history lesson, courtesy of Don Syme who worked on adding generics to .NET and then went on to design and implement F#, which is a pretty impressive set of achievements!!

Background and History

• 1999 Initial research, design and planning
  • .NET/C# Generics History: Some Photos From Feb 1999
• 1999 First ‘white paper’ published
  • More C#/.NET Generics Research Project History – The MSR white paper
  • MSR White Paper: Proposed Extensions to COM+ VOS (Draft) (pdf)
• 2001 C# Language Design Specification created
  • Some History: 2001 “GC#” (Generic C#) research project draft
  • MSR - .NET Generics Research Project - Generic C# Specification (pdf)
• 2001 Research paper published
  • Design and Implementation of Generics for the .NET CLR (pdf)
• 2004 Work completed and all bugs fixed
  • Some more .NET/C# Generics Research Project History