On 16 Oct 2008, at 12:09 pm, Jonathan Cast wrote:
I am not sure how say in a Java language a constructor can "conjure up a value of an unknown type".
Well, that's the point. It can't, in Haskell or in Java. If you understand that --- that you can't call the default constructor of a class that is not statically known at compile time
If you understand that about Java, then you don't understand Java. Java reflection means that compile-time types are backed up by runtime objects belonging to Type in general, to Class if they are class types. It also means that you can discover the default constructor by using aClass.getConstructor(), and you can invoke it by using .newInstance(). If it were not possible to do this, Java would not get much use out of its ability to load new classes at run time.