Question

What are the advantages (or disadvantages) of having an enum versus having a set of static final ints in Java Android applications? Are there efficiency or performance optimizations that occur that favor the use of one or the other?

I ask this in context of say intent requestCodes and such – which tend to be ints in the Android sample code, as opposed to values from an enum, which I was used to in C.

Answer 1

Enum advantages from this question:

• They are much more type-safe than integers, strings, or sets of boolean
  flags.
• They lead to more readable code.
• It’s more difficult to set an enum to an invalid value than an int or
  string.
• They make it easy to discover the allowed values for a variable or
  parameter.
• Everything I’ve read indicates that they perform just as well as integers
  in C# and most JVMs.

I would add:

• Enums can have member and instance variables, whereas an int can’t.

Like most abstractions, they are generally unequivocally advantageous once their performance catches up. Especially in your application code (as opposed to framework code) I would choose enums over other methods that simulate them.