Complex sentence: For example, before the introduction of generics in Java 5, collection classes in the Java library (excluding Java arrays) held references of type Object; in this way any non-intrinsic type could be inserted into a collection.
Split into simpler sentences: For example, before introduing generics in Java 5, collection classes in the Java library (excluding Java arrays) held references of type Object. In this way, any non-intrinsic type could be inserted into a collection.