Why is an IoC/DI container called a 'container'?

Question

I'm just trying to understand where the label 'container' came from. Anyone know?

Seems like many things could be called 'containers'.

Answer 1

Because it serves as container for objects. It is the framework that manages their lifecycle. It is responsible to instantiate, resolve references and destroy them.

Answer 2

In order to differentiate it from a factory, which doesn't keep instances alive.

Answer 3

Probably because it "contains" object definitions (and manages object creation and destruction).

What's in a name.

Answer 4

The word collection is intended to hide the implementation of a collection or container of things. You can't call it a list, array or stack because those are specific kinds of implementations. Collection would also work but Container is the word that caught on.

Answer 5

Because it sounds friendlier than framework.