Dagger uses annotations to create generated code instead of reflection.

What is reflection in dagger?

Delect — the Dagger Reflect Gradle Plugin

When it detects that there is a dependency on the Dagger runtime, it adds the Dagger Reflect runtime. When it detects the Dagger compiler or the Dagger Android compiler, it swaps them out for the Dagger Reflect compiler.

How does a dagger work?

Dagger generates code similar to what you would have written manually. Internally, Dagger creates a graph of objects that it can reference to find the way to provide an instance of a class. For every class in the graph, Dagger generates a factory-type class that it uses internally to get instances of that type.