This depends on the programming language in question. Your question is framed in the context of Java, where it seems that getters and setters are generally thought of as a good thing.
In contrast, in the Python world, they are generally considered as bad style: they add lines to the code without actually adding functionality. When Python programmers need to, they can use metaprogramming to catch getting and/or setting of object attributes.
In Java (at least the version of Java I learned slightly a decade ago), that was not possible. Thus, in Java it is usually best to use getters and setters religiously, so that if you need to, you can override access to the variables.
(This doesn't make Python necessarily better than Java, just different.)
