When is it Appropriate to use Generics Versus Inheritance?

Question

What are the situations and their associated benefits of using Generics over Inheritance and vice-versa, and how should they be best combined?

Thanks for the answer

Answer 1

Use generics when you want to create a "template" that can apply to many styles of unknown classes. Eg. Collections holding ??? are good candidates for generics. Inheritance is for when you have a base conecpt that children "are" an extension of that concept.

My general rules

• if you start defining properites as Object in your code and type casting a lot, then its probably time for generics.
• If you want to program against the "higher concept" as well as the derived class then its inheritance.
• If your class is going to wrap or work on a concerte class then its generics.
• If you are relying on the specifics of an unknown "yet to be defined" class then your probably better with generics.
• If you derived classes are "is a" then its usually inheritance
• If your superclass "uses some x" then its generics.