It is ugly but you can make many of that things making all constructors request a paramter Class<T> cls.

One thing you learn using java is not moving arrays around.

The comparator stuff is true.

Make the compiler to fail if you pass raw classes. A List is not a List<Foo> and in some cases is not a List<?> (where List is a class of <T extends Foo>).

What I miss is some kind of self type, or "return this", I do not know how to tell it. Imagine a imaginary class A:

    this aMethod() { 
        stuff(); 
        return this;
    )

This aMethod returns an A when invoked on an A instance or a B, B extends A, if is a B instance. Handy for builders and fluid apis:

    B thisIsB = new B();
    thisIsB.aMethod().bMethod();