[JulianMorrison]

The main difference with casting to Object is that you can use type switches or safe casts which return an additional success boolean, to restore type safety quickly after taking the item out of its container. Yes, you can type-test in Java before you type-cast, but it isn't idiomatic, and it isn't syntax.

[frowaway001]

"It's fine in Go to do the wrong thing, because they added syntax to make it even easier to do the wrong thing."