Agreed, completely. And if you want to go further, a convention that anything starting with an underscore is private, and probably shouldn't be accessed or cal

Agreed, completely. And if you want to go further, a convention that anything starting with an underscore is private, and probably shouldn't be accessed or called without good reason and the understanding that it may break or change at any time is a good idea. (This is how Python works.) In the real world, enforcing information hiding isn't really useful.