Does it make sense to provide non-const reference getter

Question

Sometimes I need to expose some of the class members. For example in the following example class Mechanic may need direct access to Engine componen

Answer 1

Instead of thinking about exposing private members of a class think more along the lines of calling methods on those classes. I read an interesting Java article, Why Getter and Setter Methods are Evil, which applies just as much to C++ as it does to Java.