In fact, I am not completely sure about the state of Generics in C++. AFAIK the term 'Generics' was coined in context of Java, but C++ has a similar concept they call Templates. Maybe you could elaborate on what is the exact difference between those two concepts?

Templates can do a lot more than generics can, but come with corresponding downsides.

Templates are basically a form of copy/paste style substitution with fancy bits. When you instantiate std::vector<char> in C++, the compiler creates an entirely new class with "char" substituted in everywhere the type variable appears. This class has nothing in common with std::vector<MyStruct> - there's no common superclass, the compiled code may or may not be shared depending on low level details of your toolchain and the types involved, etc. That in turn means if you want to write a function that works for any std::vector you must also use templates, and your function will also be substituted, and your final binary will also have many similar-but-different copies of the compiled code, etc. However because of how C++ templates work you can achieve some pretty astonishing things with them. In particular you're getting code compiled and tuned to the exact data type it was instantiated with, so you can go pretty fast with certain data layouts.

Java generics seem superficially similar but in fact are different. In (erased) generics, a List<Foo> and List<Bar> are exactly the same class at runtime. They're both just List and both just contain objects. The compiled code is the same, you can cast between them if you know what you're doing, etc. Likewise if you write a generic function that works for any list, there's only one copy of that function. Generics have different tradeoffs: they're less powerful (you can't write a regex library with them for instance), and they don't auto-tune themselves to particular data types ... at least not until Project Valhalla comes along ... but they're backwards compatible with pre-generic libraries at a binary level and they avoid an explosion of compiled code bloat, which is a common problem with templates.

Thanks for clarifying, sounds like pretty deep stuff though.

Can you point me to a resource with details about this? I'm relearning C++ and a comparative evaluation of a language feature like that would be very useful.

Check Tour of C++, 2nd edition is updated for C++20.

I think they were just referring to the angle-bracket syntax.