[roca]

In this context "type erasure" means that Java compiles all instances of a generic method to a single implementation that is oblivious to the type parameters. Thus in Java you can't write "T t = new T()" where T is a generic parameter, because the type-erased code doesn't know what T to create.

In Rust, each instance of a generic function is compiled separately and customized as necessary to the specific type parameters. You can write "let t = T::new();" because the compiler will generate a call to the correct constructor for each instance of the generic code. In this sense, types are NOT erased.