What is the best explanation for the term "generic"?

Question

I am looking for an good explanation, maybe with some examples. In my understanding, something is "generic" when it can be used for multiple purposes. But I may be wrong...

Answer 1

The root is the same as "genus" -- it means describing all the members of a group of related things.

In programming terms, it means you're describing a whole collection of things that share a common pattern or template, with only small variations. C++ templates and Java generics are, to the programmer, more or less the same thing: a way of saying "whatever the underlying type is, I want to be able to do these things." The implementaiton methods are different, but the idea is the same.

So the idea is, itself, somewhat generic.