Are global static classes and methods bad?

Question

It\'s generally agreed upon that relying heavily on global stuff is to be avoided. Wouldn\'t using static classes and methods be the same thing?

Answer 1

public class Foo
{
    private static int counter = 0;

    public static int getCounterValue()
    {
         return counter;
    }
    //...
    public Foo()
    {
        //other tasks
        counter++;
    }
}

In the code above you can see that we count how many Foo objects were created. This can be useful in many cases.

The static keyword is not global, it's telling you that it's on class level, which can be very useful in various cases. So, in conclusion, class level things are static, object level things are not static.