What good are public variables then?

Question

I\'m a total newbie with tons of ?\'s in my mind and a lot to experience with C++ yet! There\'s been something which I find really confusing and it\'s the use of public vari

Answer 1

I don't care much for writing accessors that do nothing. I have two reasons for this attitude.

• One of the reasons for doing so is that the code will later be inherited from. I've found this is usually not true in practice. What usually happens is the code is refactored or replaced. The lifespan of code is almost always very short.

• You're making extra work now for something that might, or might not, happen in the future. This is a variation of the "premature optimization" fault.

There are places where it's a good idea and places where it's not. In most cases I feel the answer is it's not useful.