I think it's partly a defensive tactic to stop others playing fast and loose with your object state. I used to write classes and then add fields and auto gener

I think it's partly a defensive tactic to stop others playing fast and loose with your object state. I used to write classes and then add fields and auto generate getters/setters. Now I don't, I just make all the state private and if I find myself wanting a getter/setter I ask myself why. Too much use of getters/setters is just reinventing the problem that private state was meant to avoid. So for example rather than: if(email.getState() == EmailState.SENT) { I have: if(email.wasItSent()) {