[ShorelineMike]

Perhaps an analogy will help.

***
Scenario: Pointy-Headed Boss (PHB) says to Dilbert: “I need an employee to do ImpossibleTask. And no, you may not hire a new employee from outside.” Dilbert frantically searches the list of employees that he manages for one with the capability of handling ImpossibleTask, and tells that employee to perform ImpossibleTask on PHB’s behalf.
***

Dilbert is the “reflection class” for PHB in this scenario. He can “see into” the capabilities of the employees that he manages and “reflect” those capabilities back to PHB.

PHB doesn’t (have to) know (or care) which employee actually performs ImpossibleTask, as long as Dilbert finds one that does.

In sum, a “reflection” class has the capability of inspecting the attributes (data) and behaviors (actions) of another class and providing that information to another class that requests it.

[dfwgator]

Here is the problem with reflection:

field.setAccessible(true);

[knarf]

So .. an outsider (hacker) can be called by dilbert or the hacker IS dilbert?