The only question left is whether not using accessor methods within the class should be called "optimization". Sure it improves the speed, but ... does it make the code harder to read? Does it make the class harder to use? Does it make the maintenance any harder?

The only thing it does is that it forces you to make changes to the code should you need to use the code in some unexpected way. If you never need to do so ... you gained a lot for nothing, if you do, you only need to do a very reasonable amount of work to support the new use.

You may need to use your class over the network one day, shouldn't it be done and used as a SOAP service even now?

Update: Thinking about this some more ... maybe what petdance suggests could sometimes be seen as "premature generalization" :-)

Edit by castaway: Closed small tag in signature