Why do we use .NET properties instead of plain old get/set functions?

Question

I understand the many benefits of providing an interface to access the members of a class indirectly. My question is: isn\'t that already something you can accomplish in jus

Answer 1

Jon Skeet has an excellent overview on his C# article blog about why properties matter. In it he explains why properties should be used over exposing public fields.

As for why to use properties instead of getter/setter methods, I would suggest the following thoughts:

• Properties provide a cleaner, more concise syntax that is easy to understand and read.
• Properties enable assignment expression chaining: A.x = B.y = C.z
• Properties convey the semantics of data access clearly and consistently - consumers expect that there are no side effects.
• Properties are recognized by many libraries in .NET for tasks such as XML serialization, WPF bindings, ASP.NET 2-way binding, and more.
• Properties are recognized by the IDE and many visual designers and can be displayed in a property editor.
• Properties enable support for the increment (++) and decrement (--) operators.
• Properties can be easily differentiated from methods using reflection and allow dynamic consumers to extract knowledge about the data exposed by an object.
• C# 3 supports automatic properties which helps eliminate boilerplate code.