How it works...

At the heart of generics lies the ability to reuse a single class or method. It allows developers to essentially not repeat similar code throughout your code base. This conforms well to the Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle. This design principle states that a specific bit of logic should be represented in code only once.

Using generic classes, for example, also allows developers to create a class that is type safe when compiling. Type safe basically means that the developer can be assured of the type of the object and can use the class in a specific way without experiencing any unexpected behavior. Therefore, the compiler takes over the burden of type safety.

Generics also allow developers to write less code, because code can be reused and less code also performs better.