This is correct. JavaBeans were a bad solution to a problem. It was Swing (or was it AWT then?) that needed it first, so that tool builders could allow widgets

This is correct. JavaBeans were a bad solution to a problem. It was Swing (or was it AWT then?) that needed it first, so that tool builders could allow widgets to have their properties customised. So the vile JavaBean conventions took hold. I only quibble on the "mindlessly" part. I will never add a get/set in a class if it isn't needed. But invariably, in a Java project, some library somewhere insists that I have them. So eventually I find I've reluctantly added them. Sometimes you can get away with leaving them private, sometimes not. It's a pain in the neck and like many things in Java, it should have been sorted out years ago.