What is so bad about Singletons

Posted by Ewan Makepeace on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Ewan Makepeace
Published on 2008-09-26T06:02:00Z Indexed on 2010/04/07 13:33 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 233

Filed under:

best-practices

|

design-patterns

|

singleton

The Singleton pattern is a fully paid up member of the GoF Patterns Book but lately seems rather orphaned by the developer world. I still use quite a lot of singletons, especially for Factory classes, and while you have to be a bit careful about multithreading issues (like any class actually) fail to see why they are so awful.

This site especially seems to assume that everyone agrees that Singletons are evil. Why?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about best-practices

Batch Best Practices and Technical Best Practices Updated

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
The Batch Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products (Doc Id: 836362.1) and Technical Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products (Doc Id: 560367.1) have been updated with updated and new advice for the various versions of the Oracle… >>> More
Partial template specialization of free functions - best practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
As most C++ programmers should know, partial template specialization of free functions is disallowed. For example, the following is illegal C++: template <class T, int N> T mul(const T& x) { return x * N; } template <class T> T mul<T, 0>(const T& x) { return T(0); } //… >>> More
Object Oriented PHP Best Practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Say I have a class which represents a person, a variable within that class would be $name. Previously, In my scripts I would create an instance of the object then set the name by just using: $object->name = "x"; However, I was told this was not best practice? That I should have a function set_name()… >>> More
Good place to look for example Database Designs - Best practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have been given the task to design a database to store a lot of information for our company. Because the task is rather big and contains multiple modules where users should be able to do stuff, I'm worried about designing a good data model for this. I just don't want to end up with a badly designed… >>> More
Notification Email Best Practices--From Server Setup to Programming

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
All, I'm in the process now of building a SaaS tool that allows network admins to generate notification emails to the members of the end-users of our platform (among many many other things). I'm running into a bit of an "out of my expertise" wall, as I know there are a lot of variables involved… >>> More

Related posts about design-patterns

Should universities put more emphasis on teaching their students about design patterns?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
While I've heard about design patterns being mentioned in a few courses at uni, I know of only a single course which actually teaches design patterns. In almost all other areas (algorithms, parallelism, architecture, dynamic languages, paradigms, etc), there are several, often a basic course and an… >>> More
Podcasts on GoF design patterns

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Anyone know of a good podcast on design patterns? >>> More
How often are design patterns used in the workplace using PHP

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hey everyone, I read a book awhile back called PHP Design Patterns and Practice, and ever since then I have been using design patterns whenever I think they are needed. However it just occurred to me that maybe most companies do not use design patterns very often for PHP, or at all. What I was wondering… >>> More
Who benefits from the use of Design Patterns?

as seen on DotNetBlocks - Search for 'DotNetBlocks'
Who benefits from the use of design patterns is like asking who benefits from clean air or a good education. All of the stakeholders of a project benefit from the use of design patterns. Project Sponsor Project sponsors benefit from the use of design patterns because they promote reduced development… >>> More
Architect: "Collaborating on Design Patterns"

as seen on Oracle Technology Network - Search for 'Oracle Technology Network'
It takes an architect community to raise a collection of SOA design patterns. >>> More