How do you design and implement generic functions that can work with different types of data?

??Generic Functions. Instead of writing separate functions for lists of integers, strings, etc., you can write a single generic function. In this example, the printList function can accept a list of any type and print its contents. This makes the function highly reusable, as it can operate on any type of list. ??Generic functions can be declared on their own or be class members of a class, no matter generic or non-generic. Generic functions are used in algorithms which do not depend on the types they operate on. For example, searching through an array does not depend on the type of values the array stores. ??To use generics, you need to use angular brackets and then specify a type variable inside them. Developers generally use T , X and Y.

Please add/mention "type inference" in the article's title. Some languages (or their older versions) do have generics, but no type inference.

An example of parametric polymorphism is a map function. `map` is a higher order function that takes another function as an argument (the parameter in ‘parametric’). This parameter does need to handle its input correctly, but the point is that `map` need not know anything about the data. ‘map’ is truly generic, and avoids the need for type handling and branching.

While Wikipedia and maybe other sources do mention "Ad hoc polymorphism", no average developer who actually does create such functions call it so. Please call it something like "Ad hoc (type-constrained) polymorphism". Remove "type that belongs to a type class" - confusing at least, and not applicable to functional and no-class-inheritance languages (like Rust). Replace it with something like "type that conforms to a given constraint, like a parent type (in languages with class inheritance), or interface/protocol/trait (in most modern languages, regardless of class inheritance)."