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by DonaldPShimoda 2612 days ago
> No, they don't, because “more or less” is not actually directly.

I disagree.

Consider a `Counter` class, intended to be used for counting something. The class has one field: `Counter.count`, which is an integer.

A setter/getter for this field would be like `Counter.setCount(i: Int)` and `Counter.getCount() -> Int`. There is no effective difference between using these methods and having direct access to the internal state of the object.

A more "true OOP" solution would be to use methods with semantic meaning, for example: `Counter.increment()`, `Counter.decrement()`, and `Counter.getCount() -> Int`. (Yes, the getter is here because this is a simple example.) These kinds of methods are not directly exposing the internal state of the object to be freely manipulated by the outside world.

If your getter/setter does something other than just get/set, then it's not really a getter/setter anymore — it's a normal method that happens to manipulate the state, which is fine. But using getters/setters (in the naive, one-line sense) is commonplace with certain people, and I feel that their use undermines the principles Kay was getting at.