Comment by gurkendoktor

The code was inspired by a piece of Java code that rendered geometric primitives. It was basically case "box": return parseBox(); as you suggested in your other post.

Turning "box" into "parseBox" using string operations and then using reflection to call the right method is an approach I'd consider in Ruby, but not in Java. It breaks IDE features like "Find Usages" and static analysis, and the code to dynamically invoke a Java method is more annoying to review than the boring repetition in my posted snippet.