is there a reason why emptyList has a type parameter and couldnt just return List<Nothing>?

# announcements

[yawkat]

is there a reason why emptyList has a type parameter and couldnt just return List<Nothing>?

[diesieben07]

I think it's mostly convenience.
val emptyStringList: List<String> = emptyList()
vs.
val emptyStringList = emptyList<String>()

[Burkhard]

There is an issue related to this: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-1215, that would allow default type parameters. In this case emptyList could be defined as fun emptyList<T = Nothing>().
Andrey Breslav said that this is might be part of 1.4: https://discuss.kotlinlang.org/t/allow-typealias-to-have-the-same-name-as-generic-class/6789/9?u=wasabi375)

[karelpeeters]

@diesieben07 is right, see https://kotlinlang.slack.com/archives/C0B8Q383C/p1556635359017800?thread_ts=1556625186.017500&amp;cid=C0B8Q383C.