>Something which I've come to believe does not exist, the pattern itself is broken. >Paraphrasing Mencken, for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. Singleton is ever that answer.

Just because you haven't found a good use it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And about Mencken... All he said is that you can't have Singletons without having a Global State (obvious) and apparently he has an strong allergy to global states.

Global states are fine. Sure, they will make your tests harder but there are a lot of software that don't use unit test for legitimate reasons and hence don't have that problem.