API to handle string constants

[hyperpape]

String constants are ubiquitous, and right now it requires significant ceremony to use them--you have to pass the constant from whatever method you're using from where you're computing it out to a static block where you initialize it.

It seems easy enough for the class builder to make this simpler. Could, for instance, have a method that can be called from anywhere, which handles setting up the constants, so that they can be used.

registerStringConstant("constantName", "someString");
set("x", getStatic("constantName", thisClassType, Type.of(String.class));

We could also support an api like:

set("x", stringConstant("constantName", "someString"));

Which could do much the same thing, but allow inline definition at the point of use. In this case, the stringConstant call would have a side-effect of registering the constant, and return a StaticFieldReference as if we'd called getStatic. The advantage would be that it's concise, but I'm not sure multiplying the ways to do things is worth it.