> Mechanically adding behavior (get/set methods) to track your private state has always been a stupid idea that has nothing to do with OO except to violate encapsulation.
What should be private state is a matter of debate.
If you have a point, it's not too ridiculous to ask "where is it?" Cartesian coordinates may or may not be how the Point object represents where it is, and that internal detail should be hidden from callers.
> But do you also now have getR() and getTheta()? Why?
It seems like a Point class should hold its internally state in the "best" implementation for how it is usually used, and provide its state out to callers in all of the convenient forms that would be used more than occasionally.
Of course, one should avoid purely exposing internal details. And sometimes you might encapsulate more to encourage callers to use the pointA.getDistanceAndBearing(pointB) call. (But I don't think this makes sense for points; knowing their location is too fundamental).
What should be private state is a matter of debate.
If you have a point, it's not too ridiculous to ask "where is it?" Cartesian coordinates may or may not be how the Point object represents where it is, and that internal detail should be hidden from callers.
> But do you also now have getR() and getTheta()? Why?
It seems like a Point class should hold its internally state in the "best" implementation for how it is usually used, and provide its state out to callers in all of the convenient forms that would be used more than occasionally.
Of course, one should avoid purely exposing internal details. And sometimes you might encapsulate more to encourage callers to use the pointA.getDistanceAndBearing(pointB) call. (But I don't think this makes sense for points; knowing their location is too fundamental).