Practice to return itself instead void in Java [duplicate]

Question

My team mates introduce me to new practice writing method which will not return void.

public class Test {
   public Test doCalculations() {
      //code
      return this;
   }
   public Test appendTitle(String test) {
      //code
      return this;
   }
}

Instead of returning void they suggest to return object itself. One of the advantage of this aproach they say, you can chain methods.

Instead of writing:

 while(1) {
    test.appendTitle("aaa");
    test.doCalculations();
    map.add(test);
 }

You can write more elegant code:

 while(1) {
     map.add(test.appendTitle("aaa").doCalculations());
 }

What could be disadvantages of this aproach? Do you suggest to include it in daily use?

Answer 1

I would say it is not a good practice. By looking at the method signature that returns an object, how can I know if it is a entirely new instance that is being returned or the existing one being returned.Note that in cases of immutable classes modified methods do return a new instance of the class.