Why does the Java 8 generic type inference pick this overload?

Question

Consider the following program:

public class GenericTypeInference {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
           


        

Answer 1

I ran it using Java 1.8.0_40 and got "Object".

If you'll run the following code:

public class GenericTypeInference {

private static final String fmt = "%24s: %s%n";
public static void main(String[] args) {

    print(new SillyGenericWrapper().get());

    Method[] allMethods = SillyGenericWrapper.class.getDeclaredMethods();
    for (Method m : allMethods) {
        System.out.format("%s%n", m.toGenericString());
        System.out.format(fmt, "ReturnType", m.getReturnType());
        System.out.format(fmt, "GenericReturnType", m.getGenericReturnType());   
   }

   private static void print(Object object) {
       System.out.println("Object");
   }

   private static void print(String string) {
       System.out.println("String");
   }

   public static class SillyGenericWrapper {
       public  T get() {
           return null;
       }
   }
}

You will see that you get:

Object public T com.xxx.GenericTypeInference$SillyGenericWrapper.get() ReturnType: class java.lang.Object GenericReturnType: T

Which explains why the method overloaded with Object is used and not the String one.