Generics in C#: A Beginner's Guide

A beginner's guide to generics in C#, explaining how they allow classes and methods to work with any data type safely.

What are Generics?

Generics allow you to define classes, methods, and interfaces with a placeholder type parameter, so the same code can work with different data types without duplication.

Generic Classes

A generic class is declared with a type parameter in angle brackets, such as List, letting the same class definition be reused for many different types.

Generic Methods

A generic method defines its own type parameter, allowing it to accept and return different types depending on how it's called, while still enforcing type safety.

Benefits of Generics

Generics improve type safety by catching type mismatches at compile time and improve performance by avoiding unnecessary boxing and unboxing of value types.