You don't have to "actively try to misunderstand people" who confuse the meaning of the word "as" with the meaning of the word "by". They are confused about the precisely defined, widely understood meaning of words, and they already actively misunderstand the English language, as well as the Java language specification.

If I drove your grandmother BY a car, it would be totally different than driving her AS a car (logically: if your grandmother had wheels, then she'd be a car). In the same sense, passing the value of an object BY reference is totally different than passing a reference to an object AS a value.

Nobody's "actively trying to misunderstand people," because those people are already actively confused and insist on clinging to and spreading their shallow, incorrect definitions that directly contradict the Java language specification itself.

No matter how many times how many people patiently explain it to them in clear unambiguous terms, they still insist they're right and everyone else including the Java spec and James Gosling himself are wrong. Just look at all the ignorant postings in this thread by people like Mark Stock, Mark Hedley and Kevin Ryan, who just can't get it through their heads that they're wrong.

http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread.tss?thread_i...