Saying Goodbye to a Singleton

On October 6, 2011, in Announcements, by Steffen Itterheim

I’m just a programmer, trying to comprehend.

[cc lang=”cpp”]
-(void) dealloc
{
[steveJobs release];
steveJobs = nil;
}
[/cc]

Steve’s public @interface was one of vision, drive and passion. His private @interface remained largely that: private.

Steve’s @implementation was not perfect, and it had a particularly nasty bug that eventually brought down the whole system. But by that time the parts of his @implementation that worked perfectly had accomplished a lot, and influenced a lot of other objects through indirection. Even directly on occasion.

His memory imprint on those objects will continue to affect their runtime behavior for a long time.

We mourn the deallocation of a Singleton, if ever there was one.


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5 Responses to “Saying Goodbye to a Singleton”

  1. Tom Kirby-Green says:
    October 6, 2011 at 12:50

    Ah yes, but one of Steve’s parting gifts was Automatic Reference Counting, so this becomes:

    {}

    becomes

    ”

    :-)

  2. franz says:
    October 6, 2011 at 12:54

    sad story indeed

  3. Dani says:
    October 6, 2011 at 16:24

    Too young, it’s sad…

  4. jim says:
    October 6, 2011 at 17:47

    A singleton is a horrible anti-pattern that is a glorified global used to hack together a bad/wrong design. Please do not equate this with Steve Jobs as he was a great man.

    • Steffen Itterheim says:
      October 6, 2011 at 18:13

      A Singleton is a powerful design pattern in the right places and for the right purpose. Goto has its uses, too. Hell, even Windows, if you consume it with a glass of ice water. :)

      I’ve yet to see a game engine that doesn’t use Singletons. I’ve yet to see any user interface framework that doesn’t use Singletons. They’re being used for a reason, and for a good reason I might add.