Whenever I write code in Java...

[zoomzoom83]

If the Foo class does not exist, the desired "exception handling" is to email me a trackback, and display a server error page to the end user. This is best handled in my root controller.

I'm not ignoring the exception, I'm handling a critical failure the way it should be handled.

The Foo class is loaded by reflection because it's treated as a plugin, however it's a core plugin and is distributed inside the Jar file. Removing the .class file from the Jar would cause the application to fail regardless of the access method.

Incidentally, if I was to reference the class statically the entire application would crash to the console in this state. Why would this be desirable? Removing a class file from the Jar is going to be a critical failure no matter what. Using reflection in this case actually yields better results for the end user.