protected data in abstract class

Question

My question involves specifically Java, abstract classes, and the use of protected data. I am being told that all the data should be private, and protected getters/setters

Answer 1

If someone subclasses your class, and puts the subclass in the same package as your current class, they may want to override your getters and setters. For example, they wantto make sure that i may only be set to a value greater than 1.

Other than that, it's really up to you. The convention is that there are getters and setters for everything though.