It is called encapsulation.
No one should know how a class does its magic. The external classes are
programmed to the interface (methods)(preferably to an interface class
rather than directly to the implementation) , they are not allowed to
peek inside.
What if you find a better way to persist the data or change your coding
standards for variable names?
If you have allowed/encouraged others to access your classes' properties
directly, their code will now fail to function.
How do you know who to warn or what other classes are at risk; your
code has no links to who calls it.
Using getters and setter for anything other than Inversion of Control is
probably not a good thing either for the same reason and do not normally
appear in the Interface class. If they do, you are committed to
respecting their names as long as you support the interface.
Maybe OK to ignore encapsulation if you are a one man show building
small demo apps but if you are building something serious with a team or
building something that others will use and maintain you have to be careful.
It is a good practice to get into so that when you build something
significant, you already have the coding practices that will make people
respect your work.
Ron
Steven Sacks wrote:
And since we're talking best practices, you don't
> have any public instance variables anyhow, hmm? :)
I don't know what "best practice" you're referring to that claims that
you shouldn't have public instance variables.
The Wikipedia says "NEED CITATION".
Which I will promptly ignore as rubbish. ;)
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