When does it make sense to use a public field?

Question

This is a question I have had for a while now:

When does it make sense to expose a field publicly like so?

public class SomeClass()
{
   public int backi         


        

Answer 1

In my opinion, when you design a structure of a class you should pay more attention to future changes and should always be friendly to them. If a future requirement need you to do some logic before returning a value instead of just returnning the value of the field, you'll have to change the interface of the class, and all users of your library will have to change. That usually become a disaster.

Keep in mind, the open / close principle.