Why am I able to call private method?

Question

I should not be able to invoke a private method of an instantiated object. I wonder why the code below works.

public class SimpleApp2 {
    /**
     * @param         


        

Answer 1

private means "only stuff in this class can mess around with it". It doesn't mean "only this instance can call its methods", which seems to be what you're expecting. Any code in SimpleApp can use anything in any SimpleApp. The alternative would be to break encapsulation -- how would you make a proper equals method, for example, that didn't require access to another instance's fields, without making those fields protected or even public or requiring getters for data that should only be available inside the class?