While languages like Ruby provide the pertinent information you need, why can't Java provide a decent, useable, toString() method right out of the box?

The Groovy Object.inspect() method suffers the same weakness as Java’s (and Groovy’s) Object.toString(): the method is only as good as what the author of the class implemented (which might be ...

String boolean float char int long byte short double Furthermore, the println method invokes the toString () method of any objects passed as an argument, so it has the ability to display details of ...

The Exception object has both a Message property and a ToString method and they return different results. Both are good, just not for the purposes that Microsoft suggests (at least, in Peter's opinion ...