Using a public field removes one of the major benefits of object-oriented design. Don't misunderstand me: in many cases, really all you need is a collection of related fields and making them public is indeed OK - like a struct in C.
But I tend to err on the side of safety with my fields - private member, public accessors - while I work out my modeling and refactoring. When the design settles, then I can relax access if it's OK. And when something changes in the design (atomicity requirements, immutability, etc) I already have most of the boilerplate in place. Mostly though, I keep my accessors.
On a related note, do Java IDEs not provide boilerplate code? I'm more an Objective-C guy and the language now supports "here's a property" and "create the accessors" alongside my needs for custom ivar names, custom setters, etc. Even if Java the language doesn't have similar features, I'd expect IDEs to give you this kind of boilerplate stuff.
But I tend to err on the side of safety with my fields - private member, public accessors - while I work out my modeling and refactoring. When the design settles, then I can relax access if it's OK. And when something changes in the design (atomicity requirements, immutability, etc) I already have most of the boilerplate in place. Mostly though, I keep my accessors.
On a related note, do Java IDEs not provide boilerplate code? I'm more an Objective-C guy and the language now supports "here's a property" and "create the accessors" alongside my needs for custom ivar names, custom setters, etc. Even if Java the language doesn't have similar features, I'd expect IDEs to give you this kind of boilerplate stuff.