Am 16.05.2011 07:01, schrieb Darren New:

> There's similar wording in C#. It's more like "this type is an interface
> to manipulate classes, which aren't really first-class objects, which is
> why we give you this separate data structure to manipulate them." It
> just *feels* like they're not first-class objects, compared to Smalltalk
> or JavaScript or something like that.

I do agree.

For classes to be 1st-class objects, I'd expect to be able to do the 
same things with class expressions that you'd be able to do with class 
names, such as:


     MyClass foo (Class<MyClass> c)
     {
         return new c();
     }

instead of the more cumbersome Java code:

     MyClass foo (Class<MyClass> c)
     {
         Constructor<MyClass> co = c.getConstructor();
         return co.newInstance();
     }

Those are the things that make you /feel/ that the reflection API is 
something designed on top of an earlier language design.

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