"Though getter/setter methods are commonplace in Java, they are not particularly object oriented (OO). In fact, they can damage your code's maintainability. Moreover, the presence of numerous getter and setter methods is a red flag that the program isn't necessarily well designed from an OO perspective."
"It's a 25-year-old principle of object-oriented (OO) design that you shouldn't expose an object's implementation to any other classes in the program. The program is unnecessarily difficult to maintain when you expose implementation, primarily because changing an object that exposes its implementation mandates changes to all the classes that use the object."
"Please see the first lesson in the miniseries entitled Java Advanced Placement Study Guide: Introduction to the Lessons, Primitive Types, for additional background information. The previous lesson was entitled Java Advanced Placement Study Guide: Method Overloading."
