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John Doe
4,003 PointsWhy not make all methods static?
To use a static method you don't have to create a new object first. Great! Why not make all methods static?
3 Answers
Pedro Cabral
33,586 PointsI believe it’s because the objects would not to be able to have different properties from each other. If a static color is orange it will be orange for object a and object b. If one changes it, it will change the other’s color as well as the property belongs to the class.
Alec Meyer
6,303 Pointsstatic methods are usually created as "utility methods".
A good example of using static methods is the Math class. No need to create math objects, but it is super useful to bundle all math related functionality with one place to find it.
static methods lose a lot of power though as they cannot access member variables in an instance of a class. If we made Math objects for some reason, none of these methods would be able to access the newly created object's properties.
Hope that helps.
Ricardo Peña Marin
15,177 PointsStatic methods by definition cannot access instance variables, so you could make all methods and variables static, but practically you would't have objects.