Is there a down side? I feel almost dependent on it now. Whenever a project gets past a certain size almost feel an allergic reaction to standard patterns and immediately re-wire it with a Dependency Injection framework.
The largest issue I’ve found is it can be confusing for other developers who are just learning it.
Also, I’d feel much better if it were a part of the language I was using. Though, for Java at least, there are a couple very lightweight libraries which are quite good.
Thoughts? Bad experiences? Or just stop worrying about it?
[EDIT] Re: Description of Dependency Injection itself
Sorry for being vague. Martin Fowler probably describes it FAR better than I ever could… no need to waste the effort.
Coincidentally, this confirms one point about it, that it’s still not widely practiced and might tend to be a barrier when working with teams if everyone is not up to speed on it.
I’ve taken a stab at describing some of the possible downsides in a blog post here: http://kevin-berridge.blogspot.com/2008/06/ioc-and-di-complexity.html