Re:Teaching the Unfortunate Parts
by ameliaquining on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @09:25AM
(#25569975)
Only arrays (the only generic type that predates Java 5) have this problem in Java, and for precisely this reason, modern Java practice avoids arrays in favor of other collection types. When real generics were introduced in Java 5, they used a design with proper variance that doesn't have this problem.
The main reason behind accepting it is that it is very useful and safe in certain situations that the type system is too weak to define strictly: if a function takes an (string|number)[] and only reads from it, it is perfectly safe to pass in a string[].