Or: 3) implement getX() and getY() alongside getR() and getTheta() and allow user code to decide which to use. Double the functionality without having to expos

Or: 3) implement getX() and getY() alongside getR() and getTheta() and allow user code to decide which to use. Double the functionality without having to expose internal state. 4) implement a PolarPoint class with a way to convert between that and Point. This is more applicable if the concepts are not orthogonal but also not as strongly correlated as coordinate systems. The two ways of handling you describe are not how I would actually handle any of this in real situations. Getters and setters meanwhile allow you to do things like recalculate internal state whenever you call setX() or setR() to amortize computational costs or do any other kind of change tracking without having to rely on some more language-specific feature to do so. Plus getters and setters work across network boundaries unlike modifying state directly.