Singletons: good design or a crutch? | Singletons are a hotly debated design pattern, so I am interested in what the Stack Overflow community thought about them.


Please provide reasons for your opinions, not just "Singletons are for lazy programmers!"


Here is a fairly good article on the issue, although it is against the use of Singletons:
[scientificninja.com: performant-singletons](http://web.archive.org/web/20090303174418/http://scientificninja.com/advice/performant-singletons).


Does anyone have any other good articles on them? Maybe in support of Singletons?