In 2005, with C# and .NET Framework 2.0, Microsoft introduced a feature named generics that enables your types to be more reusable, by allowing a programmer to pass types as parameters similar to how you can pass objects as parameters.
First, let's see an example of a non-generic type, so that you can understand the problem that generics is designed to solve.
In the PacktLibrary project, add a new class named Thing, as shown in the following code, and note the following:
Thinghas a field namedDataof theobjecttypeThinghas a method namedProcessthat accepts an input parameter of thestringtype, and returns astringvalue
Note
If we wanted the Thing type to be flexible in .NET Framework 1.0, we would have to use the object type for the field.
using System;
namespace Packt.CS7
{
public class Thing
{
public object Data = default(object);
public string Process(string input)
{
if (Data == input)...