> This is why the concept of Beans bothers me. A Bean is a stateful object that throws its state into your face, and forces you to directly manage it.
I disagree.
Beans are Java's version of the ideas expressed in Visual Basic and, later, COM -- ideas often called something like "software componentry". They are objects that can be instantiated and configured without having to write custom code to invoke their methods, because the instantiation and configuration follow accepted standards, as well as the means by which they register to subscribe to and publish events. This lets them be instantiated and manipulated by other tools in the pipeline, such as a GUI builder tool or an automatic configurator like the one in Spring Framework.
I disagree.
Beans are Java's version of the ideas expressed in Visual Basic and, later, COM -- ideas often called something like "software componentry". They are objects that can be instantiated and configured without having to write custom code to invoke their methods, because the instantiation and configuration follow accepted standards, as well as the means by which they register to subscribe to and publish events. This lets them be instantiated and manipulated by other tools in the pipeline, such as a GUI builder tool or an automatic configurator like the one in Spring Framework.