Why is casting the class of a generic to Class unsafe?

Question

I\'m making a MethodPointer class in order to simulate the functionality of function pointers from C++. At first, I was doing everything with just Object

Answer 1

SLaks' answer points out that object.getClass() decays to Class, to explain the compile error. But it's not safe to cast to Class.

getClass "returns the runtime class" of the object it's called on. For example, if we're inside a MethodPointer, then object is-a Number but its runtime type could be Integer, Double, etc. That tells us that casting object.getClass() to Class isn't safe because Class and Class are different objects, representing different classes - a distinction that seems very relevant to the correctness of what you're trying to do.

So what's the solution? Well, don't cast. Insist on taking a Class from the caller.