Question

Could someone please explain why are attributes of a class are not ordinarily defined to be static.

Answer 1

When a field is made static, it is associated with that class. It means that once initialized, every use of the field sees that same thing. Take a look:

class Test {
    public final static String test = "test";
}

This would be used as Test.test. You can think of it as a field of the Class object that is created on loading Test.

When you make a field non-static, that means it is associated with an instance of the class. So if you had this:

class Test {
    public String test = "test";
}

… you’d use it like so:

Test t = new Test();
System.out.println(t.test);

It could vary from instance to instance, for example if the test field is initialized through a constructor argument or altered via a method.