Can you explain the concept of generics in Java? How do they improve type safety?

Generics in Java allow you to write classes, interfaces, and methods with a placeholder for the data type. They provide type safety by allowing you to specify the type of elements that a collection can hold, ensuring that type-related errors are caught at compile time rather than at runtime.

Example of generic class:

public class Box<T> {
    private T value;

    public void setValue(T value) {
        this.value = value;
    }

    public T getValue() {
        return value;
    }
}