Comment Re:Easier to learn != easier to use (Score 1) 382
Instead, they chose the more sophisticated approach of type erasure - which added a lot of complexity, limitations, and even introduced the concept of compile-time warnings in the Java language - not because of backwards compatibility (adding new kinds of bytecode to the JVM is OK and it happens occasionally), but because they wanted indefinite interoperability between old code (which would see the collection objects “raw”) and new code (which would see the very same objects “generified”).
Now academics universally despise type erasure, but back then at least half of them thought that it was a good idea and you can still see it today if you search the web for their blog posts of the time, where they explained the tricks that they used to overcome the limitations of type erasure and why type erasure wasn't so bad after all.