Static methods cant access instance fields?

Question

I have read many article regarding the static fields that**\"Static methods have no way of accessing fields that are instance fields, as instance fields only exist on instances

Answer 1

You cannot access instance fields of the class that the static method is part of, because a static method is not called on an instance of this class. If you create an instance of that class, you can access it's instance fields as normal.

Your b is not an instance field, it's a normal local variable.

The sentence you quoted just means that you cannot do what you tried in the line you commented out: you cannot access a without an instance. Non-static methods use this as the default instance, so you could access a by simply writing a = 17; which is equivalent to this.a = 17;