Public Fields versus Automatic Properties

Question

We\'re often told we should protect encapsulation by making getter and setter methods (properties in C#) for class fields, instead of exposing the fields to the outside worl

Answer 1

In a related question I had some time ago, there was a link to a posting on Jeff's blog, explaining some differences.

Properties vs. Public Variables

• Reflection works differently on variables vs. properties, so if you rely on reflection, it's easier to use all properties.
• You can't databind against a variable.

• Changing a variable to a property is a breaking change. For example:

  TryGetTitle(out book.Title); // requires a variable