[Zope3-dev] Need help with jargon

[Jim Fulton]

Stephan Richter wrote:
> On Friday 02 April 2004 11:05, Gary Poster wrote:
> 
>>>  utility                          singleton
>>
>>+ 1.  I think this is an improvement for a number of reasons, not least
>>of which that I find 'service' and 'utility' to be somewhat
>>interchangeable in sentences--and in fact, when they are not, an example
>>'utility' is 'electricity' (essential), while an example service is
>>'cleaning' (not essential :-).  But that's probably a controversial
>>argument.  I'll leave it by saying that 'singleton' does convey useful
>>information, as Steve argues.
> 
> 
> I am surprised this gets as many +1 as it does. 

Me too.

> The more I think about it, the more I think it is mislabling these components. 
> 
> - The word singelton is widely known in OO programming as a class for which 
> only one instance exists. This is not the case with utilities at all. A 
> TranslationDomain utility gets initiated many times and there are a lot of 
> its instances in the utility service. The only thing that is unique is the 
> (interface, name) pair of a utility and the instance will always be the same. 

Well said.

I don't think the word "singleton" is all that meaningful to most people.
To those to whom it *is* meaningful, the meaning doesn't match what we currently
call "utilities", as Stephan points out.

Jim

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