In Java, why can't I declare a final member (w/o initializing it) in the parent class and set its value in the subclass? How can I work around?

Question

In a Java program, I have multiple subclasses inheriting from a parent (which is abstract). I wanted to express that every child should have a member that is set once only (

Answer 1

You probably want to have a Parent(String birthmark) constructor so that you can ensure in your Parent class that final is always initialized. Then you can call super(birthmark) from your Child() constructor.