Java™ How To Program (Early Objects), Tenth Edition

The public and static Keywords

Method maximum’s declaration begins with keyword public to indicate that the method is “available to the public”—it can be called from methods of other classes. The keyword static enables the main method (another static method) to call maximum as shown in line 21 without qualifying the method name with the class name MaximumFinder—static methods in the same class can call each other directly. Any other class that uses maximum must fully qualify the method name with the class name.