When to use Any instead of generics

You can use Any instead of generics in the following cases:

• When you don’t need to do type-specific operations: If your function only requires using methods common to all types (such as toString()), Any is sufficient.
• When you don’t need type flexibility: If you’re not going to perform operations that depend on the specific type of the element, there’s no need to use generics.
• To simplify code: Using Any makes code clearer and easier to understand in these cases.

If your function only needs to work with elements in a generic way and does not need to do specific operations based on the type, it is better to use Any instead of generics. This simplifies the code and makes it more readable, avoiding unnecessary complexities.

Let’s explain this with code. This example shows a use case where using Any in a Kotlin class can lead to type issues and runtime errors. Let’s break...