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 number of statics. I was asked by the senior technical lot to cut down on the number of statics used. I've googled about the same, and I find that many programmers are fairly against using static variables.

I find static variables more convenient to use. And I presume that they are efficient too (please correct me if I am wrong), because if I had to make 10,000 calls to a function within a class, I would be glad to make the method static and use a straightforward Class.methodCall() on it instead of cluttering the memory with 10,000 instances of the class, right?

Moreover statics reduce the inter-dependencies on the other parts of the code. They can act as perfect state holders. Adding to this I find that statics are widely implemented in some languages like Smalltalk and Scala. So why is this oppression for statics prevalent among programmers (especially in the world of Java)?

PS: please do correct me if my assumptions about statics are wrong.

Answer 1

There are 2 main problems with static variables:

• Thread Safety - static resources are by definition not thread-safe
• Code Implicity - You do not know when a static variables is instantiated and whether or not it will be instantiated before another static variable

Answer 2

I find static variables more convenient to use. And I presume that they are efficient too (Please correct me if I am wrong) because if I had to make 10,000 calls to a function within a class, I would be glad to make the method static and use a straightforward class.methodCall() on it instead of cluttering the memory with 10,000 instances of the class, Right?

I see what you think, but a simple Singleton pattern will do the same without having to instantiate 10 000 objects.

static methods can be used, but only for functions that are related to the object domain and do not need or use internal properties of the object.

ex:

public class WaterContainer {
    private int size;
    private int brand;
    ...etc

    public static int convertToGallon(int liters)...

    public static int convertToLiters(int gallon)...

}

Answer 3

From my point of view static variable should be only read only data or variables created by convention.

For example we have a ui of some project, and we have a list of countries, languages, user roles, etc. And we have class to organize this data. we absolutely sure that app will not work without this lists. so the first that we do on app init is checking this list for updates and getting this list from api (if needed). So we agree that this data is "always" present in app. It is practically read only data so we don't need to take care of it's state - thinking about this case we really don't want to have a lot of instances of those data - this case looks a perfect candidate to be static.

Answer 4

Static variables are generally considered bad because they represent global state and are therefore much more difficult to reason about. In particular, they break the assumptions of object-oriented programming. In object-oriented programming, each object has its own state, represented by instance (non-static) variables. Static variables represent state across instances which can be much more difficult to unit test. This is mainly because it is more difficult to isolate changes to static variables to a single test.

That being said, it is important to make a distinction between regular static variables (generally considered bad), and final static variables (AKA constants; not so bad).

Answer 5

Since no one* has mentioned it: concurrency. Static variables can surprise you if you have multiple threads reading and writing to the static variable. This is common in web applications (e.g., ASP.NET) and it can cause some rather maddening bugs. For example, if you have a static variable that is updated by a page, and the page is requested by two people at "nearly the same time", one user may get the result expected by the other user, or worse.

statics reduce the inter-dependencies on the other parts of the code. They can act as perfect state holders

I hope you're prepared to use locks and deal with contention.

*Actually, Preet Sangha mentioned it.

Answer 6

All the answers above show why statics are bad. The reason they are evil is because it gives the false impression that you are writing object oriented code, when in fact you are not. That is just plain evil.