Object Ownership

Way back when, back deep in the primordial mists of DOS, I used to code in C++. When using C++ I spent much time asking myself deep philosophical questions, such as "is the object I am about to try and make use of still there?" Through some very hard knocks I learnt and applied these rules:

• Every object has only one owner.
• This owner both creates and destroys any object it may own.
• Ownership should not be transferred.
• The owner forms part of an object's identity.

Java has no pointers^*.

So a lot of the problems solved by tight control of ownership are no longer present. In my Java coding I do try to adhere to my old C++ rules, but I have noticed that other Java developers don't seem to grant them the importance that I do. Or even are aware of them...

So I really enjoyed Alex Potanin's presentation to the Wellington Java User Group. He shared both his ideas and a way to formally implement rules for object ownership in Java.

Given my past this is real syntactic sugar that I could live with. Sadly, in the post meeting wash-up I discovered that I was in a minority. A very small minority. Further proof, I guess, that Java has changed the programming paradigm...

9:56:37 PM