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

Hmmm, I once used it to clean up objects that weren't being returned to an existing pool.

They were passed around a lot, so it was impossible to tell when they could safely be returned to the pool. The problem was that it introduced a huge penalty during garbage collection that was far greater than any savings from pooling the objects. It was in production for about a month before I ripped out the whole pool, made everything dynamic and was done with it.