Factory classes

Can somebody explain what are factory classes good for? As in, "why all this shit"? I have the impression factory classes are yet another suit in the Emperor's wardrobe. To me, they always looked like some bored programmer who needs to keep his job and hates the KISS principle decided to make our lives worse.

>>25
To be honest, Java started out ok....then 1.2 come out and something went horribly wrong.

It's also unfortunate that a lot of people take up CS because it's 'in'.


| How it ever got mindshare is quite beyond me.
Bubble. BS Marketing. Market it to the managers (crossplatform, WORA, blah blah BS BS, etc), keep all the developers and people with technical know-how out of negotiations (don't forget to buy our super expensive servers!), then use the managers to force feed it down the chain. Result: Java adoption shoots though the roof because you need so many damn people just to do one damn simple little thing and doesn't bloody work properly in the end, hordes of disillusioned and pissed off developers.