Yes Brian, you are right. This is also the reason why constructors should not make polymorphic calls: the overriding method could be accessing variables not initialized yet.
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The declared (compile) type of this is the class containing the method in which this appears.
this, within an instance method points the instance on which the method was invoked.
this, within a constructor points the instance that is being constructed. In this way the parent constructor initializations are performed over the instance being created, as it should be
this is called the hidden argument because you do not see it in the argument list, but it appears magically as the first local variable within the method or constructor.
the hidden argument to a constructor is the reference to the object returned by new (just been allocated space)