Anytime you can move a choice from runtime to compile time, it has the ability to speed up runtime. Such that if a lot of what your sort routine is doing at ru

Anytime you can move a choice from runtime to compile time, it has the ability to speed up runtime. Such that if a lot of what your sort routine is doing at runtime is finding out what the type of the objects being sorted is, then moving that to a choice at compile time can recover all of that time. Note, this is not just generics. Java could use overloading for years before generics to get similar benefits. Common LISP has type annotations that can give similar benefits. Generics is just a much easier/stronger to use construct for this in many cases.