Visual Basic 2005 for Programmers: Deitel Developer Series, Second Edition

25.6. Generic Classes

The concept of a data structure (e.g., a stack) that contains data elements can be understood independently of the element type it manipulates. A generic class provides a means for describing a class’s capabilities in a type-independent manner. You can then instantiate type-specific objects of the generic class. This capability is an opportunity for software reusability.

Once you have a generic class, you can use a simple, concise notation to indicate the actual type(s) that should be used in place of the class’s type parameter(s). At compilation time, the compiler ensures the type safety of your code, and the runtime system replaces type parameters with actual arguments to enable your client code to interact with the generic ...