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The article suggests writing utilities that already exist in the Java library.

It's true, these methods do exist already. (Arrays.asList(...), for example)

Yes, asList does - that's why I took it out. The Set and Map versions don't - however.

Arrays.asList() is effective for initializing sets too (using the constructor that takes a Collection) and the technique is not specific to a specific set implementation (such as HashSet in the article's examples). The map initialization is potentially useful. If the article had focussed on that I'd have voted it up.