Prefer lists to arrays or Generic List VS Array

Generic List Vs Array

Consider the below mentioned code fragments.
// Fails at runtime!
Object[] objectArray = new Long[1];
objectArray[0] = "I don't fit in"; // Throws ArrayStoreException

but this one is not:
// Won't compile!
List<Object> ol = new ArrayList<Long>(); // Incompatible types
ol.add("I don't fit in");

Either way you can’t put a String into a Long container, but with an array you
find out that you’ve made a mistake at runtime; with a list, you find out at compile
time. Of course you’d rather find out at compile time.

The second major difference between arrays and generics is that arrays are
reified [JLS, 4.7]. This means that arrays know and enforce their element types at
runtime. As noted above, if you try to store a String into an array of Long, you’ll
get an ArrayStoreException. Generics, by contrast, are implemented by erasure
[JLS, 4.6]. This means that they enforce their type constraints only at compile
time and discard (or erase) their element type information at runtime. Erasure is
what allows generic types to interoperate freely with legacy code that does not use
generics