Is it good practice to use ordinal of enum? [closed]

Answer 1

Using ordinal() is unrecommended as changes in the enum's declaration may impact the ordinal values.

UPDATE:

It is worth noting that the enum fields are constants and can have duplicated values, i.e.

enum Family {
    OFFSPRING(0),
    PARENT(1),
    GRANDPARENT(2),
    SIBLING(3),
    COUSING(4),
    UNCLE(4),
    AUNT(4);

    private final int hierarchy;

    private Family(int hierarchy) {
        this.hierarchy = hierarchy;
    }

    public int getHierarchy() {
        return hierarchy;
    }
}

Depending on what you're planning to do with hierarchy this could either be damaging or beneficial.

Furthermore, you could use the enum constants to build your very own EnumFlags instead of using EnumSet, for example