On: JDK 9 release schedule

[int_19h]

Aside from backwards compatibility, what's good about type erasure for generics?

[dragonwriter → int_19h]

It permits languages on the platform with substantially-richer compile-time type systems than the primary language on the platform with good interior stories (this was, IIRC, a substantial problem with Scala.NET.)

[jsmith0295 → int_19h]

Doing it a better way is hard

[int_19h → jsmith0295]

Is it, though? The most basic implementation, where things are still erased at runtime by the JIT, should be fairly simple, although it will not give the expected perf gains, of course.

Either way, CLR and C# did it a long time ago, and in the same time period when Java acquired its type-erased generics.

[jsmith0295 → int_19h]

They care too much about backwards compatibility I think. .NET had done generics this way from the beginning.