The lazy initialization example is a classic algorithm. Usually concurrency hackers rediscover it from first principles. It's easy to maintain because the con

The lazy initialization example is a classic algorithm. Usually concurrency hackers rediscover it from first principles. It's easy to maintain because the concurrency protocol it uses is easy to understand. Here's how I'd write it: template<typename T, typename... Args> void constructSingleton(Atomic<T*>& singletonRef, Args&&... args) { for (;;) { T* oldValue = singletonRef.load(); if (oldValue) return oldValue; T* newValue = new T(std::forward<Args>(args)...); if (singletonRef.compareExchangeWeak(nullptr, newValue)) return newValue; delete newValue; } } This works so long as the singletons are happy to be deleted. I'm assuming that's true here.