You haven't given any examples so I don't really understand what you're saying. Can you give me an example of good OO code that doesn't use getters and setters. Objects have fields (or properties or members). There needs to be a way to set and get them and it needs to be overrideable.

In Perl for example, you can directly access the underlying hash. Are you saying that this is a good way of doing things?

I'd say that's a bad way of doing things. This kind of code is tied to the underlying representation of the object and prevents you from reusing the code with other objects that would have had a compatible interface if you'd used getters and setters.

By the way, when I say getters and setters I include things like Class::Accessor::Lvalue which lets you do 

print $o->some_field;
$o->some_field = 5;

[download]
which gives a simple interface while still allowing override of get and set behaviour.

In reply to Re^3: Law of Demeter and Class::DBI by fergal
in thread Law of Demeter and Class::DBI by hardburn

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