"I've got a better idea: how about we mark the variable in some way" — if all you need is a mark, the Python convention to add an underscore in front of your pr

"I've got a better idea: how about we mark the variable in some way" — if all you need is a mark, the Python convention to add an underscore in front of your private method or variable works just fine, as does the convention to make constants uppercased. I've seen quite a bit of JS code use these conventions too. The trouble with true private/protected variables is that you never really know how your code is going to get used and which parts of your library people may want to mess with. In that case, you can either play around with things you aren't really supposed to touch, or if that's not possible because everything's encapsulated, being in a hurry, you'll just fork the code and turn private methods into public ones. Both approaches suck, and the problem exists regardless of whether your language supports `private` and `const` keywords or not.