title: Is it better to pass reference to an object or pass individual attributes in an object in Java?
body: <p>I'm dealing with legacy code and I constantly see method calls with multiple attributes from the same object being passed into a method:</p>
  
  <pre><code>update(user.getID(), user.getLanguage() etc...)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there a distinct advantage or disadvantage to doing it this way or would I just be as well to pass in the user object (in this case) and deal with attributes within the method called?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Follow Up:</strong></p>
  
  <p>Lots of excellent answers, thank you.  Apologies for the lack of exact detail in the question but as I said this is seen all over the system I am working on and this seemed like a nice simple example.  Please feel free to turn this question into a community wiki question as no one answer can possibly be accepted over others as they're all good and have valid points.</p>