I think there's a distinction between the kind of "processing" you refer to and the kind generics are a good tool to solve. I'm interpreting what you describe

I think there's a distinction between the kind of "processing" you refer to and the kind generics are a good tool to solve. I'm interpreting what you describe as something like the methods on an object (in OO land), e.g., the "ToString()" method in Java. Generics aren't good for all such use cases (though they are for more than many might believe). The more specific the operation, the less applicable (obviously?) generics are. Generics are useful for abstract operations regardless of the type. As an example consider insertions, deletions, and access of members of a container such as a list or map. As such the underlying type/data model isn't really relevant to their utility.