Flutter for Beginners

When and why to use generics

The use of generics can help a developer to maintain and keep collection behavior under control. When we use a collection without specifying the allowed element types, it is our responsibility to correctly insert the elements. This, in a wider context, can become expensive, as we need to implement validations to prevent wrong insertions and to document it for a team.

Consider the following code example; as we have named the variable avengerNames, we expect it to be a list of names and nothing else. Unfortunately, in the coded form, we can also insert a number into the list, causing disorganization or confusion:

main() {  List avengerNames = ["Hulk", "Captain America"];  avengerNames.add(1);   print("Avenger names: ...