Returning new collection instead of existing collection instance variable
<p>I was having trouble understanding the following snippet:</p>

<pre><code>public class Person {
   private List&lt;Person&gt; people = new ArrayList&lt;Person&gt;();

   public List&lt;Person&gt; getPeople() {
      return new ArrayList&lt;Person&gt;();
   }
}
</code></pre>

<p>Edit: Sorry, maybe I got my terms incorrect. I guess I've seen code like this where a new collection is returned, and there is a collection instance variable for that class.  So I was wondering what the implications were.</p>
