What is the difference between an interface and the Any type in the context of a programming language?

In Go, interface{} (empty interface) and any are synonyms: any is simply an alias for interface{}.

• interface{} is an interface without methods that can hold a value of any type.
• any was introduced in Go 1.18 for convenience and code readability, especially with generics.

Example:

var a any = 42
var b interface{} = "hello"

fmt.Println(a) // 42
fmt.Println(b) // hello

Differences between an interface with methods and any:

• An interface with methods requires the type to implement those methods.
• any (empty interface) requires nothing and is suitable for storing any value.

In summary, any is just a more convenient name for the empty interface interface{}.