> Can someone explain what people did to solve these problems before someone came up with generics? Like many things in programming, when your language didn't

> Can someone explain what people did to solve these problems before someone came up with generics? Like many things in programming, when your language didn't have a feature you just did it yourself. You didn't have one sort() method you had a different one for integers, floats, strings, etc. Or you used other language features that could accomplish the same thing only a little messier.