Initialization order inconsistency with override

Question

Initialisation order is inconsistent depending on whether a variable is overridden or not.
Two questions -
1. Is this supposed to be the case, or is it a bug?
2. If it is supposed to be the case, why did Sun decide to make it work like that?
For example, try the following code:
package javafxapplicationtest;
class Super {
    public-read var overriddenVar = "zero";
class A extends Super {
    public-read var b = B {}
    public-read override var overriddenVar = b.value;
    public-read var newVar = b.value;
class B {
    public var value = "one"
var a = A {};
println("b {a.b}");
println("b.value {a.b.value}");
println("a.overriddenVar {a.overriddenVar}");
println("a.newVar {a.newVar}");It produces:
b javafxapplicationtest.Main$B@175093f1
b.value one
a.overriddenVar
a.newVar oneNote first that a.overriddenVar and a.newVar get different values. Note also that a.overriddenVar is neither the value from the superclass nor the naively expected) value from the assignment.
I suspect this is an initialisation order issue -- the override causing b to be assigned when newVar is set, but not when overriddenVar is set. However it is stunningly unintuitive, as it breaks the natural "happens before" expectation of each line happening before the next line within the same context.
As well as being anti-intuitive, it is also hair-pullingly irritating. How many use cases are there where you want the overridden variable assignment to deliberately try to "catch the null" and get in there before the variable it is referencing gets initialised/assigned even though it is written afterwards?
For a concrete case, consider the code on [my blog post|http://wbillingsley.blogspot.com/2010/03/javafx-initialisation-craziness.html]: You have a custom control and want to wire mouse events through to your custom skin's Behavior. The events aren't wired because onMousePressed is an overridden variable.

Answer 1

This is hair-pulling irritating. I just spent hours trying to figure out why the following wouldn't work until I came across your post:
public class MyStage extends Stage {
    def myTextBox: TextBox = TextBox {
        text: "Test"
    override var scene = Scene {
        width: 1024
        height: 768
        content: [
            myTextBox
}It looks like the answer is that overridden members are initialized before other members of the same class. Specifically, the overridden scene member is initialized before myTextBox. I too would love to know why it works this way, since it seems backwards. It would be nice if the compiler at least told you it was going to ignore your code, instead of just doing it silently.
I suppose the solution could be something like this, but I'd love to hear of cleaner alternatives:
public class MyStage extends Stage {
    def myTextBox: TextBox = TextBox {
        text: "Test"
    def localScene = Scene {
        width: 1024
        height: 768
        content: [
            myTextBox
    init {
        scene = localScene;
}<sarc>
Or I suppose I could create my UI in a single giant FX script file, like a lot of the examples out there.
Hey, at least it's using declarative syntax so it's cool, right?
</sarc>