What are the alternatives to public fields?

Question

I am programming a game in java, and as the question title suggestions i am using public fields in my classes. (for the time being)

From what i have seen public fields a

Answer 1

In Java, using private fields with getters/setters is the recommend practice, provided external clients of your class really need access to those fields.

Otherwise keep them as private fields and simply don't provide a getter/setter.

There are various reasons why this is a best practice:

1. If clients are using your field directly and later something needs to change regarding that, you're stuck. With a getter you can do a whole lot of things before the field is accessed.
2. There is something called the JavaBeans specification that requires you to use getter/setters. Without them your class (then called bean) won't interoperate with that. JSP and JSF's EL is one example of something that required your class to comply with JavaBeans standards.

_{(p.s. unrelated to your question, but you'd better not declare backPack as an ArrayList. Declare as List; code to interface, not to implementation)}