Access Modifiers
Access modifiers control the visibility and accessibility of classes and their members. In Java, the primary access levels are public, protected, package-private, and private. C# provides public, private, protected, internal, protected internal, and private protected. As a senior engineer, I treat access modifiers as part of API and encapsulation design: the narrowest visibility that satisfies the requirement is generally preferable.
public: accessible wherever the language's visibility rules permit.
private: restricted to the declaring class/type.
protected: accessible to the declaring type and appropriate derived types.
Java package-private: accessible within the same package.
C# internal: accessible within the same assembly.
C# private protected: accessible to derived types within the same assembly.
Use the least visibility necessary to preserve encapsulation.
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