Service locator: an anti-pattern →

The service locator pattern is, in my estimation, a menace to good software design. I’d like to find time to write about it, but Brent Roose does a really good job so I’m linking to him.

I want to highlight three problems with this approach, directly caused by the use of a service locator.

• There’s a bigger chance of runtime errors.
• The code is obfuscated to the outside.
• It increases cognitive load.

Let’s look at these problems, one by one.

While he focuses on cognitive load the most heavily perhaps, in my estimation, the runtime errors ¹ issue is the biggest one for me. Being able to know from a static analysis standpoint whether your code should run okay or not is huge. This also factors into my love of strong typing as well — which is yet another topic for yet another day.