[Springframework-developer] Singleton vs. Prototype, appropriateness of the latter as a name

[Colin S. <col...@ex...>]

I was doing a bit of proofing in the manual during a deploy, and was 
thinking that to me, it seems to me to be appropriate to call singleton 
beans singletons, but the name prototype as used in the manual for 
non-singletons is not really appropriate. A prototype, as used in the 
Gang of Four book, and as I would think if it just based on what that 
word means
   http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=prototype
is a bean or object that exists, and is used as a prototype for creating 
new objects, that is, the new objects are essentially copies of it. In 
our case though, that's not a fair description; all we have is a bean 
definition which is used to create new instances.

Nitpicking, maybe, but I suggest that when we talk about this and 
document this, we talk about beans being deployed in singleton and 
non-singleton modes (or as singletons and non-singletons), and leave it 
at that.

Regards,
Colin