Is final ill-defined?

Question

First, a puzzle: What does the following code print?

public class RecursiveStatic {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println(scale         


        

Answer 1

Nothing to do with final here.

Since it is at instance or class level, it holds the default value if nothing gets assigned yet. That is the reason you seeing 0 when you accessing it without assigning.

If you access X without completely assigning, it holds the default values of long which is 0, hence the results.