Why would you ever implement finalize()?

Question

I\'ve been reading through a lot of the rookie Java questions on finalize() and find it kind of bewildering that no one has really made it plain that finalize()

Answer 1

The only time I've used finalize in production code was to implement a check that a given object's resources had been cleaned up, and if not, then log a very vocal message. It didn't actually try and do it itself, it just shouted a lot if it wasn't done properly. Turned out to be quite useful.