It's worth remembering that Java and C# didn't have generics initially. And when they did get them, there was a lot of pushback along the same lines; sometimes almost word-to-word about lost simplicity etc.
18 years later, the C# and Java developers are doing fine.
It's worth remembering that C# did have them pre-release, Microsoft decided to release .NET 1.0 without them to avoid postponing the release date until they were fully done.
This is clearly described in the HOPL papers regarding generics in .NET.
18 years later, the C# and Java developers are doing fine.