On Wed, 29 Aug 2001 16:26:59 -0500, David L. Nicol wrote:
>Bill J. Programmer publishes a class foo that is guaranteed to correctly
>blarg the frobniz, someone subclasses it and breaks the blarg function,
>that simply will not do!
>
>With a "final" it is no longer possible for the new class to identify
>itself as a foo.
It's not a foo. It's instance of a *subclass* of foo. If it can't be
different than foo, then you might just as well toss out the idea of
subclassing altogether.
Look at the "lame duck" example on this page:
<http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/harold/srf/javaspae.html>. So you say a duck
has two legs. That's fine as a default. But a lame duck, with one leg
missing, only has one leg. So if you make the number of legs (or feet)
of a duck "final", then lame ducks can't be ducks. Or they can be ducks,
but then they can't have but one leg.
--
Bart.
