I think the popularity of getter and setters come from a mix of dozens of small problems to solve. Protection from internal representation change is one. Expli

I think the popularity of getter and setters come from a mix of dozens of small problems to solve. Protection from internal representation change is one. Expliciting what can be done with a property is another (i.e force write only or read only properties by only exposing a setter or a getter). Exposing “virtual” properties that are a combination of “real” properties (i.e. exposing a string representation of a price with a currency for instance, where both the price and currency are independant properties). Spying on getters and setters also helps for testing. And so many other potential uses. Each use case is not a big deal on its own, but there is enough chance to hit at least one of the potential use case for at least some of the objects that autogenerating getter and setters for basically everything is seen as a good practice. Also no one gets fired for putting getter/setters, the reverse could be true. I personally prefer contexts where I don’t have to care so much about all the above (this means less protective programming in general), but in a lot of enterprisey applications generating getter/setter everywhere is just a way of life.