I should have been more specific. To use Colin's trick with this pattern, you would need to write a separate function (like InitializeSingleton()) that calls t

I should have been more specific. To use Colin's trick with this pattern, you would need to write a separate function (like InitializeSingleton()) that calls the constructor and returns the pointer. If InitializeSingleton() is impossible to inline/optimize, which is the goal of Colin's trick, then 1 and 2 must happen before 3, because 3 cannot happen until the function has been called and returns, and the function does steps 1 and 2.