Can someone explain to me what the reasoning behind passing by “value” and not by “reference” in Java is?

Question

I\'m fairly new to Java (been writing other stuff for many years) and unless I\'m missing something (and I\'m happy to be wrong here) the following is a fatal flaw...

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Answer 1

Dave, you have to forgive me (well, I guess you don't "have to", but I'd rather you did) but that explanation is not overly convincing. The Security gains are fairly minimal since anyone who needs to change the value of the string will find a way to do it with some ugly workaround. And speed?! You yourself (quite correctly) assert that the whole business with the + is extremely expensive.

The rest of you guys, please understand that I GET how it works, I'm asking WHY it works that way... please stop explaining the difference between the methodologies.

(and I honestly am not looking for any sort of fight here, btw, I just don't see how this was a rational decision).