>>To differ from those code-heavy tools, in VFP you don't need to write the Get and Set methods (aka _access and _assign), because you can make any property directly available without writing a single byte of code. But you can, if you want. So, the best of both worlds - available and not mandatory.
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>Is it really mandatory (from the technical perspective of "does not work if done against common usage") in Java now ?
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>curious
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>thomas

Not an expert in Java myself... From what I have seen so far, it should work if you access the properties ("fields" I think they are called in Java) directly (assuming you defined them with the appropriate access rights).

The problem here is that the designer of a class may later decide to change the internal data structures - and this may require to change any outside calls to this class. To avoid this, the data is encapsulated - the properties are hidden (from outside classes), and can only be accessed through "set" and "get" methods. Thus, the developer makes changes only within the class.

I don't know whether a newer version of Java allows something similar to the _access and _assign methods in Visual FoxPro. From what I have seen so far, it doesn't seem so.