A programming paradigm that allows writing code with types as parameters, enabling the same code to work with different data types while maintaining type safety.
Generic comes from Latin 'genus' meaning kind or class. The concept was formalized in the 1970s with ML's parametric polymorphism, later popularized by C++ templates (1980s) and Java generics (2004).
It's like having a universal remote control that works with any TV brand - you write the code once with a placeholder for 'any type,' and then you can use it with integers, strings, or custom objects without rewriting everything!
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