Java Conventions: use getters/setters WITHIN the class?

Question

My professor really emphasizes protecting against privacy leaks by always using accessors and mutators to access private instance variables; however, do I have to use the ge

Answer 1

On the flip side, consider it from a design standpoint. One of the motivations for getters/setters is that the underlying data storage can change and things that implement the class won't need to be changed since it is encapsulated.

So, keeping that in mind, using getters/setters within the class makes future changes easier. Instead of having to find all the places that alter the member directly, you just have to change the getter/setter. Depending on the complexity of the class, this may significantly reduce the amount of work it takes to change the storage members.

For example, let's assume you start out with the age variable in years. Then you decide later to store it as seconds for some reason. But you want to always print it in years anyway. So in your example, you could do the math in your toString() function (and anywhere else that wants years as the units) or you can just change the math in the getAge() routine to return years from the seconds and nothing else has to change.

Obviously that example is a bit trivial. The more complicated the class, the more useful it is to use getters/setters within it.