Objective C - Using property get accessor vs directly using iVar

Question

I was wondering what exactly are the differences between using the (get) accessor for reading the value of property and directly using the iVar?

Say I have a class which

Answer 1

I am not a very experienced person to answer this question, even though I am trying to give my views and my experience by seeing source code which is around 10yrs older.

In earlier codes they were creating ivars and property/synthesise. Nowadays only property/synthesise is used.One benefit I see is of less code and no confusion.

Confusion!!! Yes, if ivars and its property are of different name, it does create a confusion to other person or even to you if you are reading your own code after a while. So use one name for ivar and property.

By using property KVO/KVB/KVC are handled automatically, thats for sure.

@property/@synthesise sets your ivar to 0/nil etc.

Also helpful if your subclass contains same ivar.

For mutable objects Dont make properties.