Java Term of the Week: Implicit Parameter

When calling a method of an object it's common to pass a value to the method. For example, if the object Employee has a method called setJobTitle:

Employee dave = new Employee();
dave.setJobTitle("Candlestick Maker");

the String "Candlestick Maker" is an explicit parameter being passed to the setJobTitle method. However, there is another parameter in the method call that is known as the implicit parameter. The implicit parameter is the object the method belongs to. In the above example it's dave, the object of type employee.