CodeSOD: isAlive

Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? What does it even mean to be alive?

No, I haven't been hanging out in coffee shops wearing a beret and discussing philosophy. I've instead been puzzling over this code, from Nikolai K.

 public boolean isAlive() { try { return true; } catch (Exception var2) { return false; } } protected void finalize() throws Exception { try { if(this.isAlive()) { ; } } catch (Exception var2) { System.err.println("Error occurred in finalize. Exception: " + var2); throw new Exception(var2); } }

There are some deep philsophical questions here, but I don't think we can hope to extract any answers. This code begs for an explanation, but I can't give you one. I don't think the original author could either. The best Nikolai could give us was that this was in a CORBA wrapper object. Perhaps having to use CORBA drove the original developer mad? Or perhaps the original developer has a wisdom that only the mad can access?

When will isAlive return false?

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