Vince O'Sullivan wrote:
> This is a pleasant change. A discussion about Java and not
> TheNewLanguageOfTheWeek.
>
> I'm a pretty lightweight programmer compared with you guys, so I tried
> the following snippet of code to see what effect the final keyword
> would have..
>
> public static void main(String[] args)
> {
> Person p = new Person(); // A simple class with a single
> property.
> p.setName("Andrew");
> System.out.println(p.getName());
> updatePerson(p);
> System.out.println(p.getName());
> }
>
> private static void updatePerson(final Person p)
> {
> p.setName("Billy");
> }
>
> Output:
> Andrew
> Billy
>
> My simple (perhaps even simplistic) conclusion is that the final
> keyword has not added any protection but has added the false
> appearance of protection. All that has happened is that the dangers
> of getting things wrong through not using final have been swapped for
> different dangers of getting things wrong when using final.
> Personally, I'd be inclined to use Occam's razor and keep things
> simple by not adding keyword that are only partially effective, stick
> with the common idiom and rely on tests, not coding style, to prove
> the code.
That danger (assuming we define mutability as a danger) is just as there with
or without final. So
there is no swapping of dangers: just the elimination of one danger (which was
previously there),
but not all dangers. Final prevented you from writing code like this and
accidentally expecting it
to work the way your code did before:
private static void updatePerson(Person p)
{
/*
Insert a bunch of code noise and branches here.
*/
p = new Person()
/*
Insert a bunch of code noise and branches here.
*/
p.setName("Billy");
}
~~ Robert Fischer.
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