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

It is because, it creates a local variable inside the method. what would be an easy way (which I'm pretty sure would work) would be:

String foo = new String();    

thisDoesntWork(foo);    
System.out.println(foo); //this prints nothing

public static void thisDoesntWork(String foo) {    
   this.foo = foo; //this makes the local variable go to the main variable    
   foo = "howdy";    
}