> That makes perfect sense to me. How else would equals and hashcode work? It also makes perfect sense to me. Visibility is type-based, not instance-based. But

> That makes perfect sense to me. How else would equals and hashcode work? It also makes perfect sense to me. Visibility is type-based, not instance-based. But to answer the hypothetical question: one would have to introduce class-private (package private?) getter methods for all relevant truly-private fields. I'm happy that's not the case.