Accessing members in your own class: use (auto)properties or not?

Question

I\'ve created this \"question\" as a community-wiki, because there is no right or wrong answer. I only would like to know how the community feels about this specific issue.

Answer 1

I think it becomes more difficult to change the internal implementation if the code uses its own public interface.

Difficult to explain but consider these expressions:

mTotalPrice = mPrice * mQuantity;

mTotalPrice = Price * Quantity;

What to do in the second expression if I need to change the internals to express all prices in € instead of $ (without affecting the public interface which still uses $)?

One solution is to make the expression more complex by adding the opposite of the change in the property.

mTotalPrice = Price / Rate * Quantity

The other solution is to start to use the private field instead.

mTotalPrice = mPrice * Quantity

In the end you get a mix of private and public use. The only way to get consistent use is to always use the private field.