Item 71: Use lazy initialization judiciously

Lazy initialization is the act of delaying the initialization of a field until its value is needed. If the value is never needed, the field is never initialized. This technique is applicable to both static and instance fields. While lazy initialization is primarily an optimization, it can also be used to break harmful circularities in class and instance initialization [Bloch05, Puzzle 51].

As is the case for most optimizations, the best advice for lazy initialization is “don’t do it unless you need to” (Item 55). Lazy initialization is a double-edged sword. It decreases the cost of initializing a class or creating an instance, at the expense of increasing the cost of accessing the lazily initialized field. Depending on what fraction of lazily initialized fields eventually require initialization, how expensive it is to initialize them, and how often each field is accessed, lazy initialization can (like many “optimizations”) actually harm performance.