C# Generics and polymorphism: an oxymoron?

Question

I just want to confirm what I\'ve understood about Generics in C#. This has come up in a couple code bases I\'ve worked in where a generic base class is used to create type

Answer 1

It seems that once you introduce a Generic into an inheritance hierarchy or interface, you can no longer use that family of classes in a polymorphic way

Correct, it's quite similar to this situation:

class StringContainer
{
}

class IntContainer
{
}

StringContainer container = new IntContainer(); // fails to compile

but you could do this:

class Container
{
}

class Container : Container
{
}

Container container = new Container(); // OK