Author can't see the forest through the trees; so caught up in trying to show a "YAGNI violation" that he misses the simple convenience that automatic properties offer. FYI: a "YAGNI violation" is when your customers spec something simple and you create something monstrous which they end up not using anyway...thus, YAGNI. Also, a C# MVP who doesn't understand the binary difference between a field and property--what's up with that? If you even *think* you're going to use the setter and getter eventually, it's a hell of a lot easier to start with a property than to refactor a field into a property later on. Deploy some DLLs to customers and you'll understand what I mean.