Introduction to Generics in Java

• Imagine you’re running a grocery store, and you want to organize your shelves to hold different types of products.

• Traditionally, you might have separate shelves for fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and so on.

• Instead of having separate shelves for each type of product, you have a set of flexible shelves that can hold any type of product.

• Now, let’s think about generics in terms of organizing these shelves.

• The beauty of generics here is that you don’t need to create separate shelves for each type of product. You can use the same generic shelves for different types of items, making your store more flexible and efficient.

• In programming, this flexibility is incredibly valuable. You can create generic data structures or functions that work with any type of data, just like our generic shelves can hold any type of product in the grocery store. This makes your code more adaptable and reusable, which is a big win in terms of efficiency and maintainability.

• Generics, refer to a way of writing code that allows types (classes and interfaces) to be parameterized.

• This means that instead of specifying concrete types for variables, methods, or classes, you can use placeholders that are later replaced by actual types when the code is used.

• The primary purpose of generics is to enable the creation of reusable components that can work with any data type.

• They provide a way to write code that is type-safe, meaning that it can catch type errors at compile time rather than at runtime. This helps in identifying and fixing bugs earlier in the development process, which ultimately leads to more robust and reliable software.