Warp wrote:
>   Increased productivity... until the day that you actually need to heavily
> change some module because of new requirements or improvements, and you end
> up breaking thousands of lines of code which are carelessly using public
> members as they please.

In languages other than LISP (say, Python or PHP or whatever), this is 
handled by having a naming convention saying what variables are to be 
treated as private.

I'm not sure I see the benefit of "I use private: in my C++ classes" to "I 
put an underscore before private names in my classes."  Other than a touch 
of readability (which many C++/Java/etc programs violate by tacking things 
like "m_" to the front of every member variable) I don't see a whole lot of 
difference.

Certainly if should-be-private members are exposed as public but don't 
document to the user which are private, that's a problem.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

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