It's exactly like that. For some use cases, that cost matters. Trove is a popular project that does just what you describe for Set, List, and Map. For this lib

It's exactly like that. For some use cases, that cost matters. Trove is a popular project that does just what you describe for Set, List, and Map. For this library, if you stick to binary-core, you basically get what Java 8 provides out of the box, while also getting exception-throwing functional interfaces, static `unchecked` functions for concisely converting from checked to unchecked versions, and `bind` methods for providing currying operations. So the full type enumeration is one part of it, but there`s a little more to it than that. I probably could have done a better job touting the other benefits.