According to one embodiment of the invention, the JAVA compiler is modified so that when the JAVA compiler determines, while compiling source code, that an invocation of a first method, which expects to receive a reference to an object, passes, to the first method, a reference to a second method instead of a reference to an object, the JAVA compiler does not issue a compile-time error as the JAVA compiler normally would. Instead, the JAVA compiler generates compiled code (e.g., byte code) that the JAVA compiler would have generated if the source code had (a) defined a “bridge” class that implemented a method that invoked the second method and (b) contained, in the invocation of the first method, a reference to an object that was an instance of the “bridge” class in the place of the reference to the second method.