Why are static variables considered evil?

Question

I am a Java programmer who is new to the corporate world. Recently I\'ve developed an application using Groovy and Java. All through the code I wrote used quite a good numbe

Answer 1

My $.02 is that several of these answers are confusing the issue, rather than saying "statics are bad" I think its better to talk about scoping and instances.

What I would say is that a static is a "class" variables - it represenst a value that is shared across all instances of that class. Typically it should be scoped that way as well (protected or private to class and its instances).

If you plan to put class-level behavior around it and expose it to other code, then a singleton may be a better solution to support changes in the future (as @Jessica suggested). This is because you can use interfaces at the instance/singleton level in ways that you can not use at the class level - in particular inheritance.

Some thoughts on why I think some of the aspects in other answers are not core to the question...

Statics are not "global". In Java scoping is controlled separately from static/instance.

Concurrency is no less dangerous for statics than instance methods. It's still state that needs to be protected. Sure you may have 1000 instances with an instance variable each and only one static variable, but if the code accessing either isn't written in a thread-safe way you are still screwed - it just may take a little longer for you to realize it.

Managing life cycle is an interesting argument, but I think it's a less important one. I don't see why its any harder to manage a pair of class methods like init()/clear() than the creation and destroying of a singleton instance. In fact, some might say a singleton is a little more complicated due to GC.

PS, In terms of Smalltalk, many of its dialects do have class variables, but in Smalltalk classes are actually instances of Metaclass so they are really are variables on the Metaclass instance. Still, I would apply the same rule of thumb. If they are being used for shared state across instances then ok. If they are supporting public functionality you should look at a Singleton. Sigh, I sure do miss Smalltalk....