This page contains an archived post to the Design Forum (formerly called the Flexible Java Forum) made prior to February 25, 2002. If you wish to participate in discussions, please visit the new Artima Forums.

Message:

Beans are objects

Posted by Chris Morris on December 01, 2000 at 8:00 AM

The reason why a bean is required to have a no-arg constructor, it seems to me, is some loose thinking about whether a bean is an object or a class.
It would be clearer if beans were all serialized objects. It's actually been set up so a bean can "be" a class - but then it must have a non-arg constructor. If all beans were instances, then this rule wouldn't be needed.