Essential C# 12.0, 8th Edition

12

Generics

As your projects become more sophisticated, you will need a better way to reuse and customize existing software. To facilitate code reuse, especially the reuse of algorithms, C# includes a feature called generics.

Generics are lexically like generic types in Java and templates in C++. In all three languages, these features enable the implementation of algorithms and patterns once, rather than requiring separate implementations for each type that the algorithm or pattern operates on. However, C# generics are very different from both Java generics and C++ templates in the details of their implementation and impact on the type system of their respective languages. Just as methods are powerful because they can take arguments, so types ...