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No, explicit pointers are not an implementation detail. Nor is knowing when you are on an OS thread in a language where you are likely to integrate with OS functions that depend on what thread you are on. Different languages exist for different purposes requiring them to solve problems in different ways.


Two out of three arguments of the GP are implementation details. You can tell that they are implementation details by the way the language is used.

“It’s difficult to do A given B”

As a user I don’t care about B. I just want A.

For your example, the concept of explicit pointers are orthogonal to threads. That’s why you can have OS threads with explicit pointers.

Just because it’s difficult to make them work together doesn’t mean they are incompatible as concepts.

It’s still an implementation detail.

For example, during Win95 one could argue it’s impossible for a crash program not to crash the whole system.

As a user I don’t care what’s going under the hood. I just don’t like it when my Windows 95 app can crash the system. It is an implementation detail




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