Advantage of Upper Type Bound over Subtyping

Question

What is the advantage of using upper type bounds over just type in this example?

Why people prefer this

trait Pages[T <: Page] {
  val pages: Seq[T]
  def find(id: String): Option[T] = pages.find(_.id == id)
  def all: Seq[T] = pages
}

Over this:

trait Pages {
  val pages: Seq[Page]
  def find(id: String): Option[Page] = pages.find(_.id == id)
  def all: Seq[Page] = pages
}

Answer 1

It's the same as the advantage of your second example over

trait Pages {
  val pages: Seq[Any]
  def find(id: String): Option[Any] = pages.find(_.id == id)
  def all: Seq[Any] = pages
}

: more precise types, allowing you not to mix up different subtypes of Page , to access operations of MyPage without casting, etc.

Also, if you have the first and need the second, you can just use Pages[Page] ; if you have the second and need the first, you are out of luck.

Answer 2

Ok, I found out that in the first case I can specify type explicitly. If MyPage is subtype if Page .

val pages = new Pages[MyPage]{
  override val pages: Seq[MyPage] = List(MyPage("a"), MyPage("b"))
}

And the compiler can infer the type so that pages.find("a") will be the MyPage type. In the second example the type always will be Page , which forces to cast it.