Hi. Is there anybody using Blue J for Java ? i cant really understand what reference types are. can anybody help?
Reference types are not specific to java or the IDE your using.
It is present in other language and it’s basically it’s types that doesn’t hold the value itself, but an address in memory that contains the actual values.
Here’s an example, let’s say you create a String array and assign it a value like so
String[] numbers = {“one”, “two”, “three”};
Internally what Java does it creates this information in memory and gives it an address, so let’s say the address is “0x6000” this address is what actually contains the values
{“one”, “two”, three"}
So the relation would look something like this
numbers => 0x6000 => {“one”, “two”, three"}
if you copy the values of numbers into another variables it won’t copy the values itself, but the address.
I hope I was able to explain it properly if not check out this explanation, it’s for C# but it’s still valid for Java:
https://www.tutorialsteacher.com/csharp/csharp-value-type-and-reference-type#:~:text=Unlike%20value%20types%2C%20a%20reference,location%20that%20holds%20the%20data.
Mosh also explained this in one of his Java course: