I am working on a Windows Forms app for quite some time now, and I really find myself doing more typecasts in the GUI code than I ever did in my underlying business code.

What I mean becomes apparent if you watch the ComboBox control that accepts some vague "object" as it's item. Then you go off and may display some DisplayMember and a ValueMember and so on.

If I want to retrieve that value later I need to typecast my object back to what it was. Like with strings getting the value takes

string value = (string)combobox1.SelectedItem;

Since there are generics in the Framework for quite some time now, I still wonder why in the Hell not one control from the standard toolbox is generic.

I also find myself using the .Tag property on ListViewItems all the time to keep the displayed domain object. But everytime I need to access that object I then need another typecast.

Why cant I just create a ComboBox or ListView with items of type ListViewItem

Am I missing something here or is this just another example of not perfectly well thought through controls?