Absolutely not, they are not the same. Without generics, the compiler can't make any guarantees on the soundness of your code. Go will accept code that's inhere

Absolutely not, they are not the same. Without generics, the compiler can't make any guarantees on the soundness of your code. Go will accept code that's inherently broken and that Java will simply refuse to compile. I like to catch such errors as soon as possible. As for saying "they are the same once the code is running", well, duh, of course, but it's completely useless by then.