When To Use Generics

Decision guide for when generics help versus when interfaces or plain code are better.

• Author: Ian Lance Taylor
• Authority: primary
• Kind: blog
• URL: https://go.dev/blog/when-generics

What it covers

• generics vs interfaces
• good and poor generics use cases
• design tradeoffs for abstraction

Why authoritative

Official design guidance focused on generics decision-making.

Use when

• should this use Go generics
• would an interface be better than generics here
• when are generics overkill in Go

Keywords

• when to use generics, interfaces, abstraction, constraints, design

Used by

• generics