What is the purpose of accessors?

Question

Can somebody help me understand the get & set?
Why are they needed? I can just make a public variable.

Answer 1

Properties act as accessors to the internal state of an object, hiding the implementation of that state.

So, for example, you may have a first name property in a class

public class Example
{
    private string firstName;

    public string FirstName
    {
        get {return this.firstName;}
    }
}

So anyone using the class doesn't need to know how first name is stored, they just know they can get a string representation of it. By adding a set you also add a mutator, something which changes an objects internal state

public class Example
{
    private string firstName;

    public string FirstName
    {
        get {return this.firstName;}
        set {set this.firstName = value;}   
    }
}           

Again you're still isolating how the first name is stored internally (encapsulation), but users can change it by passing in a string.