Why do we lose type safety when using List and not while using List? Aren\'t they basically the same thing?
EDIT
List is a list of some type you don't know. It could be a List, List, etc.
It's effectively equivalent to List>, or List extends Object>, except that it doesn't document that fact. It's only supported for backwards compatibility.
List is a list of Objects. Any object of any type can be put inside it, contrary to a List, for example, which only accepts strings.
So no, they're not the same thing.