Is it better to use List or Collection?

Question

I have an object that stores some data in a list. The implementation could change later, and I don\'t want to expose the internal implementation to the end user. However, the us

Answer 1

Independent of the ability to index into the list via List.get(int), do the users (or you) have an expectation that the elements of the collection are in a reliable and predictable order? Can the collection have multiples of the same item? Both of these are expectations of lists that are not common to more general collections. These are the tests I use when determining which abstraction to expose to the end user.