Java Generics for Compare

I’ve been developing with Java 5+ for quite a while now. Not all developers are this lucky, some are still stuck with 1.4… some even with 1.3! But my clients all made the excellent step forward to Java 5 (some even to 6). The problem is, they moved the runtime/JDK but forget to move their developers!

In Java 5 the language brings some good improvements, the for-loop is easy to understand, and almost all the developers are using this by now. The problem starts with generics. There is a part most developers understand, the Collections API. Almost all programmers use lists now as: List<Integer> instead of a plain old List. This is a good start, but it must not end here! First, I must admit, generics in Java can sometimes be hard and confusing (when using <? extends X> and <? super X>). So I’m not going to talk about any of this ‘hard stuff’. Its the use of ‘easy’ generics that can our lifes so much easier.

For example the piece of code below:

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