private lateinit var movieAdapter: RecyclerView.Adapter<*>
private lateinit var movieAdapter: MovieAdapter

What is the difference between declaring type as the exact class of name

MovieAdapter

and

RecyclerView.Adapter<*>

? Also what does it mean by the asterix

<*>

? Which one is better?

If you declare as

RecyclerView.Adapter

, then any subtype of

RecyclerView.Adapter

can be assign to

movieAdapter

. Declaring as

MovieAdapter

means you can only assign subtype of

MovieAdapter

into it. The

<*>

basically means any type.

Check official docs about generics https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/generics.html