Java classes, objects, and instances demystified (hopefully)
A great many people are competent java developers, but have only a vague understanding of the difference between a "public static method", "public method", and the difference between a class and an object. As this was confusing to me at first, I thought I would give a quick overview. A class defines a template for what data and operations are available when you tell the JVM to create an object. So, for example: public class BlogPost { public String text = ""; public static BlogPost latest; public static BlogPost create(String input) { latest = new BlogPost(); latest.text = input; return latest; } public int getTextSize() { return text.length(); } } When you compile this class, it is creating a file that the java runtime can later use to enable programmers to load an object into memory that has a single attribute called "text" which is a reference to another o