Ken Arnold writes in his blog, "Generics are a mistake". This blog maybe a bit dated but given the interest in the news regarding Eclipse support for generics, it’s worth bring it to the forefront once again.

He brings forth a great argument that projects/features need a complexity budget and when that budget is exhausted…. I don’t think that there is a question that Generics add a degree of complexity to Java, the language. The questions is how much to they add to the level of complexity and has the added complexity been really worth it. Ken doesn’t think so and I full heartedly agree with him as no one has been able to show me any direct benefit of using generics that come close to compensate for the added complexity. Can you?

I think the problems with the current generic solution and the dirt in the corners of the implementation are more of an issue.