From: bs@... (Bjarne Stroustrup)
Date: 2003-09-17T22:35:02+09:00
Subject: Re: performance and style advice requested

Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> :
> 
> For the benefit of those of us who don't own that book (though I
> do own at least one other) -- can you tell us what in fact your
> position is on "protected"?
>

I have no idea if my opinion makes sense in the context of ruby, but
in C++ "protected" is useful for functions and types, but people who
use it to "protect" data, find that the maintenance problems are
equivalent to publice data. I recommend to keep data private unless
you absolutely need it public.

  - Bjarne Stroustrup; http://www.research.att.com/~bs