Java Reflection Performance

Question

Does creating an object using reflection rather than calling the class constructor result in any significant performance differences?

Answer 1

Yes, always will be slower create an object by reflection because the JVM cannot optimize the code on compilation time. See the Sun/Java Reflection tutorials for more details.

See this simple test:

public class TestSpeed {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        long startTime = System.nanoTime();
        Object instance = new TestSpeed();
        long endTime = System.nanoTime();
        System.out.println(endTime - startTime + "ns");

        startTime = System.nanoTime();
        try {
            Object reflectionInstance = Class.forName("TestSpeed").newInstance();
        } catch (InstantiationException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        endTime = System.nanoTime();
        System.out.println(endTime - startTime + "ns");
    }
}