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

I've played with statics a lot and may I give you a slightly different answer--or maybe a slightly different way to look at it?

When I've used statics in a class (Members and methods both) I eventually started to notice that my class is actually two classes sharing responsibility--there is the "Static" part which acts a lot like a singleton and there is the non-static part (a normal class). As far as I know you can always separate those two classes completely by just selecting all the statics for one class and non-statics for the other.

This used to happen a lot when I had a static collection inside a class holding instances of the class and some static methods to manage the collection. Once you think about it, it's obvious that your class is not doing "Just one thing", it's being a collection and the doing something completely different.

Now, let's refactor the problem a little: If you split your class up into one class where everything is static and another which is just a "Normal Class" and forget about the "Normal Class" then your question becomes purely Static class vs Singleton which is addressed in length here (and probably a dozen other questions).