[mark_l_watson]

I agree, at least partially, with the author.

In Java, I use package visibility a lot and since starting to use Ruby in a big way about 5 years ago, I often just make attributes public - no getters/setters. A bit sloppy, but makes code shorter and easier to read. I admit that this makes APIs less stable, etc.

On large or huge projects, I would follow conventional wisdom for Java best practices, but for smaller projects, shorter code and better readability works for me.