I decided to ask this question here instead of on stack overflow because it is r

Question

I decided to ask this question here instead of on stack overflow because it is rather subjective.

In C#, typically I see generic types with very poor names. Specifically, "T" is commonly used but is not a meaningful name by itself. For example:

class Fruit<T>
{
    T fruit;
}
While this is the typical approach, would anyone recommend against this? And if so, what would a reasonable naming convention be for generic types in the context of C# for generic functions and classes?

In my previous example, let's assume that generic type T must always be a type of fruit, such as Apple or Orange. The type T needs to make it obvious that it's a type of fruit, so maybe a better name would be FruitType, so we end up with:

class Fruit<FruitType>
{
    FruitType fruit;
}
This is just to give you guys an idea of what I'm looking for. What's an acceptable "rule of thumb" for this issue?

Explanation / Answer

It is indeed subjective...ish.
As some folks find i is perfectly valid for a for loop variable, some think T is perfectly valid for a type place-holder in a generic class.

I personally espouse this approach, it's a common convention and people generally know what you mean.

Where the type is meaningful I'd use a meaningful name, but generally start it with T. I recently developed a generic dictionary class (don't ask) and the declaration was

public class Dictionary<TKey, TValue>
However, for something like a Tuple, where the types are essentially meaningless, I consider the following perfectly acceptable.

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