List vs List<Object>

Question

Why do we lose type safety when using List and not while using List<Object>? Aren't they basically the same thing?

EDIT: I found that the following gives a compilation error

public class TestClass
{
    static void func(List<Object> o, Object s){
        o.add(s);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args){
        func(new ArrayList<String>(), new Integer(1));
    }
}

whereas this doesn't

public class TestClass
{
    static void func(List o, Object s){
        o.add(s);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args){
        func(new ArrayList<String>(), new Integer(1));
    }
}

Why?

Answer 1

List is a list of some type you don't know. It could be a List<String>, List<Integer>, etc.
It's effectively equivalent to List<?>, or List<? extends Object>, except that it doesn't document that fact. It's only supported for backwards compatibility.

List<Object> is a list of Objects. Any object of any type can be put inside it, contrary to a List<String>, for example, which only accepts strings.

So no, they're not the same thing.

Answer 2

Why do we lose type safety when using List and not while using List<Object>? Aren't they basically the same thing?

No they are not the same thing.

If you are providing an API,

class API {
  static List<Object> getList() { ... }
  static void modifyList(List<Object> l) { ... }
}

and a client uses it improperly

List<Integer> list = API.getList();
API.modifyList(list);
for (Integer i : list) { ... }  // Invalid

then when your API specifies List<Object> they get a compile-time error, but they don't when API.getList() returns a List and API.modifyList(list) takes a List without generic type parameters.

EDIT:

In comments you mentioned changing

void func(List<Object> s, Object c) { s.add(c); }

to

void func(List s, Object c) { s.add(c); }

so that

func(new List<String>(), "");

would work.

That is violating type safety. The type-safe way to do this is

<T> void func(List<? super T> s, T c) { s.add(c); }

which is basically saying that func is a parameterized function that takes a List whose type can be any super class of T, and a value of type T, and adds the value to the list.