Eh, there are hacks around both of those... Gratuitous "typedef classes" for the first problem (instead of using a List<Sandwich> when you want runtime to be ab

Eh, there are hacks around both of those... Gratuitous "typedef classes" for the first problem (instead of using a List<Sandwich> when you want runtime to be able to sniff the type, declare a class/interface SandwichList extends List<Sandwich> and use that) and just wrapping static factory methods around constructors to handle the generic part (to handle the second problem) Admittedly this is a little annoying, possibly even "really painful" so this doesn't really contradict your view... I don't find it really painful, just a little annoying, but that could be because I haven't used C# or another language people say has better generics so I don't know what I'm missing...