C# protected property or field

Question

Do you think it\'s better to always make protected class members an auto-implemented protected property to keep isolation or make it protected field is enough?

Answer 1

You should never allow direct access to a member variable from outside your class. Either use an auto-generated property or a property with a backing field. If you allow direct access, it can lead to some really bad debugging headaches when multiple methods change that value in a derivation chain and you don't know which one is causing the bug.