>Do I advocate the use of Private Variables for widespread use? No. I advocate the use in these limited circumstance.

What limited cirumstance? Are you suggesting using PRIVATE variables to get return values from some classes, and not others? Why the inconsitiancy when there are cleaner alternatives.

There are only a couple of reasons I'd use a private variable. One, obviously, for anything I wanted to be global in the app (certian application objects, ect) and another for exposing information to really abstract code, so a Parameters statement is not required. By "really abstract" I mean code usually written by a third party, and may or may not need the information I'm exposing. I don't think using private variables is a good idea here. Passing variables by reference is essentially the same thing, and much easier to understand in code.