Take the 2-minute tour ×  I have been recently assigned the task
of taking interviews in my company. I have been taking
interviews of developers and engineers with atleast 5-6 years of
experience.  One of my favorite question is to ask whether they
have used any kind of patterns...and the default answer has
always been "Singleton Pattern"  Since it is the most simple
pattern, I always end up asking them to write a code for it, and
only 1-2 out of 5 end up getting it right, but get confused when
I start asking about thread safety, double-checked locking
issues and etc..  My questions are:    1. Is it fair on my part
to expect a person with 5-6+ years of experience to know how to
write a Singleton pattern?   2. Is it fair on my part to judge a
person upon their ability to code a Singleton class?  EDIT: Some
clarifications. - When I ask if they know anything about design
patterns, I would like to know what kind of GoF patterns they
have used, why they have used and how they have used them. And
with 5-6 years of