.NET Design Patterns

C# language and the singleton pattern

The authors consider the singleton pattern, the way it was presented in the GoF book, as some kind of anti-pattern. A lot has been written about how to implement it in a multi-core/multi-threaded environment. Constructs such as the double-checked locking pattern have been implemented to incorporate lazy loading while implementing singleton.

The C# programming language has got a nifty feature called a static constructor, which helps to implement the singleton pattern in a thread-safe manner. The static constructor is guaranteed to be called before any method (including the constructor) is called. We believe we can stop cutting down trees in order to write about the singleton pattern, at least in the .NET world. ...