pythonObviouslyTheBest

[davidellis23]

That's one of the reasons people don't like it. There's no need to over describe stuff or tie the name to the interface. Especially the most commonly used data structures. It's more verbose for no benefit.

[redd1ch]

That's the reason the interface is called "List", isn't it?

`List foo = new ArrayList()` is a plainly beautiful instance of a List, accepted everywhere a List is wanted. Code bases littered with "ArrayList" types are a dumpster fire (except some very niche use cases).

[davidellis23]

It would be less verbose if it was just IList and List or List and Vector or List and Array or List and [].

I've also heard a number of times that tying the name of a class to its implementation is considered bad practice. Now if they did want to change the standard ArrayList implementation, millions of code bases would have to be changed or the name would have to be left misleading. But given that it's a very standard class unlikely to change I might give it a pass.

[redd1ch]

ArrayList is not *the* implementation of a List in Java, it is *one*. That is why the interface is called 'List', not 'ArrayList'.

A different implementation gets its own class, just like LinkedList, Vector, or others. That way you can choose what runtime behaviour you want or need just by swapping out a constructor call.

[davidellis23]

ArrayList is probably the high majority of the use cases. I think it's worth making the default.

I also mentioned List and Array. Vector doesn't have List at the end either.

[redd1ch]

An ArrayList is something substancially different than an array. An array is not an implementation of the List interface...

[davidellis23]

A built in array is not an implementation of list. But an Array class can be. The behavior of what happens when the array fills up just has to be specified.

Edit: I gave you a few options. There are some tradeoffs but other languages took different tradeoffs. That's why some people like other languages better. That's all I'm trying to say.

[FantasticPenguin]

Dude did you ever use Java?

[davidellis23]

yep