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Message: [QUOTE="Lew, post: 3488596"] Actually, no. The smaller point is that a machine code optimization in the library shouldn't intrinsically make a class non-subclassable, but that's not even relevant. Making a class 'final' is the API designer's way of preventing you, personally, from extending that class. It's an entirely Java thing to do, and has nothing to do with details of implementation. Joshua Bloch, in his excellent and seminal /Effective Java/, a must-read for everyone on the planet, discusses the dangers and responsibilities inherent in making a class heritable, and when you should or shouldn't. Actually, it's something that you should only do relatively rarely. The rest of the time, you declare your classes 'final' so that they cannot be extended. Programming looks different when you think about designing classes to force people to use them correctly. [/QUOTE]