What is the best practice for using public fields?

Question

When I write a class I always expose private fields through a public property like this:

private int _MyField;
public int MyField
{ get{return _MyField; }
         


        

Answer 1

I think best practice is not to do it. Unless you have some extreme performance need where you must access the field directly don't do it.

Here is a good article about it:

http://csharpindepth.com/Articles/Chapter8/PropertiesMatter.aspx