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Type erasure gets blamed for too much. Want to see some languages that make generics sing? Take a look at SML, Haskell, or Rust. What's another interesting characteristic that unites them? They erase all types. Not just generic type parameters like Java does. Everything is type erased. And they do just fine.
You're both right and wrong.
You're technically correct, which we all know is the best kind of correct, but you're wrong because you're leaving out very important Gestalt context. (EDIT: Actually, you vaguely touch on it, but you focus on arrays and Lists, which I think misses the point)
You're correct because Rust and Haskell, et al, have fully erased types (well... Rust has trait objects, which are implemented with vtables- does that count?), and nobody really complains about it. So, in a very specifically-literal sense, you're right that it's not the type-erasure that is the (sole) problem in Java.
The real problem is that Java is BIG on *runtime reflection*. You can't "reflect" on types that don't exist, so every time you do use reflection (which is approximately 100% of Java projects) and generics (which is also approximately 100% of Java projects), you're in for nonsense. Between generics, reflection, and null, I literally feel my blood pressure rise when I think about dealing with Java, and even Kotlin.
Where Java leans on runtime reflection, Haskell and Rust cannot and do not. And, therefore, the communities have found compile-time (or just tedious write-time) solutions to things like (de)serialization.
So, type erasure isn't the problem, and runtime reflection isn't a problem. But you can't do both and expect anything good to come of it.
You're both right and wrong.
You're technically correct, which we all know is the best kind of correct, but you're wrong because you're leaving out very important Gestalt context. (EDIT: Actually, you vaguely touch on it, but you focus on arrays and Lists, which I think misses the point)
You're correct because Rust and Haskell, et al, have fully erased types (well... Rust has trait objects, which are implemented with vtables- does that count?), and nobody really complains about it. So, in a very specifically-literal sense, you're right that it's not the type-erasure that is the (sole) problem in Java.
The real problem is that Java is BIG on *runtime reflection*. You can't "reflect" on types that don't exist, so every time you do use reflection (which is approximately 100% of Java projects) and generics (which is also approximately 100% of Java projects), you're in for nonsense. Between generics, reflection, and null, I literally feel my blood pressure rise when I think about dealing with Java, and even Kotlin.
Where Java leans on runtime reflection, Haskell and Rust cannot and do not. And, therefore, the communities have found compile-time (or just tedious write-time) solutions to things like (de)serialization.
So, type erasure isn't the problem, and runtime reflection isn't a problem. But you can't do both and expect anything good to come of it.