...I sideline as a Java programmer. Java's a sweet language; it handles memory allocation and garbage collection on the fly. Between that and the "write once, run anywhere" theme that Java is based on, it's my programming language of choice for non-data-intensive applications. (For crunching huge amounts of data, there's still nothing that can come close to the performance of Fortran. Too bad only meteorologists and astronomers still use it.)

In Java, that code will compile and run as written. It is, of course, presumed that the variables "dead" and "horse" are declared with compatible types elsewhere in the application, as is the function "beat()"...that, or they're inherited from somewhere further up the Object class hierarchy that the code extends.

Besides, I really don't feel like filling half the blog with the entire application, when the single line I used will convey the meaning more than adequately. It's not like we're writing in COBOL, right?

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. ~~~John Kenneth Galbraith