Why is it said that Annotations complement javadoc tags?
+1
A:
One possible reason is that the use of annotations can overlap with that of Javadoc tags.
The best example of course is the @deprecated Javadoc tag and the @Deprecated annotation, which both indicate the same thing.
Both annotations and Javadoc tags provide metadata about code elements.
Joachim Sauer
2009-10-21 12:46:34
+1
A:
Annotations are code and will be represented at the byte code level. Javadoc tags are documentation level artifacts and are meta-data for the javadoc processor.
If retention level of the annotation class is runtime, you can reflect over the class and access the annotation; no such possibility exists for the javadoc tag (unless you have access to source files and are parsing them).
So, in a very narrow sense (e.g. a javadoc processor that does bytecode processing, such as generating code) the tags can be considered "complementary" [sic] to annotations, but that's about it.
Overall, its a bad meme to carry around in your head as it really doesn't inform the true distinction between these two entirely different constructs.