This method was added only as a temporary, transitional solution. The main fix was not finished for 7.0.0 yet, but with 7.x, we should finish it:

• Provide the RuleContext directly via the typed visitors - no more Object and casting
• This affects all rules in all languages
• We should make sure, that the docs (extending PMD with a new language javacc/antlr) are suggesting a correctly typed visitor

Related issues:

• [core] Rule API refactoring #4321
  • We might consider to create an alternative base rule class (probably for each language), that is not a visitor itself.