core classes still need to be declared final?

[Nick Radov]

Is it still necessary for the core Java classes such as java.lang.Integer 
to be declared final? I understand that may have been necessary in the 
early days for performance reasons, but modern JVMs no longer provide much 
of a performance benefit for final classes. For certain applications it 
would really be helpful to be able to subclass some of those core classes.

For example, one application I'm working on deals with integer values that 
must be between 0 and 9999 inclusive. I would like to be able to create a 
custom Integer subclass which enforces that limit in the constructor, but 
currently that isn't possible. While I could create a new class that acts 
as a wrapper around Integer, the syntax would be much more awkward and 
that would also make it much more difficult to interface with other 
third-party classes.

Nick Radov | Research and Development Manager | Axolotl Corp
www.axolotl.com, d: 408.920.0800 x116, f: 408.920.0880
160 West Santa Clara St., Suite 1000, San Jose, CA, 95113
 
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