Programming Microsoft® Visual C#® 2008: The Language

Generics

Chapter 7 is about generics, which are templated collections. Generics improve upon non-generic collections. Generics improve performance mostly by eliminating boxing. They are bound to specific types at compile time. Non-generic collections rely on object types. When populating non-generic collections with values, boxing occurs because of casting from a value type to a reference type. Excessive boxing incurs both a performance and a memory penalty. Boxing also causes problems with type safety. You often cast elements that are object types to a specific type. The cast is not type-safe and can cause runtime errors when done incorrectly. Because generics are type-specific, the need for a cast is eliminated.

Generic types are classes with ...