Why are C# arrays covariant and what benefits does it bring?

Question

I\'m having trouble understanding why arrays in C# are covariant and what benefits this covariance can bring. Consider the following trivial code example:

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Answer 1

Eric Lippert says:

Unfortunately, this particular kind of covariance is broken. It was added to the CLR because Java requires it and the CLR designers wanted to be able to support Java-like languages. We then up and added it to C# because it was in the CLR. This decision was quite controversial at the time and I am not very happy about it, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.