A little confusion in java Generics

That's pretty much the same as long as the Generic on the left side is set with a type.

But it can lead to strange situations when you do not set the type of the left sided value: value:

List l = new ArrayList<string>();
List<Object> o = l;

That certainly works while adding things to the List, because String is an Object.

o.add(new Object());
o.add("String");

But when you're fetching the values, it can lead to misbehavior:

System.out.println(o.get(0)); // Exception because value(0) is no String.