Novice Java programmer doesn't read title attempts to assign a new object to a variable inside a function, doesn't work, curses Java tutorial that said objects are pass by reference.
When in C, Python, Java, JS, or anything else does reassigning a variable from the function sig ever work? The symbol is in-scope. Even when overwriting the pointer location in C, you don't just assign; you de-reference and copy over the memory that was there. A novice programmer would make this mistake, not a novice Java programmer.