Java Generics and Collections: Fundamentals and Recommended Practices

by Maurice Naftalin, Philip Wadler

Java Generics and Collections has been the go-to guide to generics for more than a decade. This second edition covers Java 21, providing a clear guide to generics from their most common uses to the strangest corner cases, giving you everything you need to know to use and write generic APIs effectively. It covers the collections library thoroughly, so you'll always know how and when to use each collection for any given task. And it explains stream processing, so you'll know which model to use and how they interoperate to get the best out of the platform library.

This indispensable guide

Fundamentals of type parameters and generic methodsSubtyping and wildcardsGenerics and reflectionDesign patterns for genericsSets, queues, lists, maps, and their implementationsConcurrent programming and thread safety with collectionsPerformance of different collection implementationsBest practices for using and extending the Java collections frameworkDesign philosophy and comparison with other collections libraries

599 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 17, 2025