Exactly. Maybe a better name would be ConnectionFactory? This could then have multiple ConnectionPools internally for sync vs. async if needed. It's certainly b

Exactly. Maybe a better name would be ConnectionFactory? This could then have multiple ConnectionPools internally for sync vs. async if needed. It's certainly better than polluting the whole code base with the logic required to instantiate an individual connection. The counter-example given is bad in another way, if you have the max retries on a per-connection basis, you're going to be blocking trying to make connections to an end point that's down. If this state is per-end point, handled by a Manager/Factory/Pool, then you can make the retry logic global. The main key with rules in software engineering is that it takes experience to know when it makes sense to break them. There's few things that fall in the "never ever" category.