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Explicit default access modifiers?

Few months ago Miguel de Icaza posted on Twitter message about explicitly stating your member private access modifier (or anything that’s default) and that he doesn’t understand it, the he wants his code be succinct.

class Foo
{
	private int _bar;
	// or?
	int _bar;
}

I, as a lot of other people, replied, that I want to be explicit about my code. Tell exactly what I want. However I had a sneaking idea in my brain since this message – because I like my code, my thoughts in code, to be succinct – and I decided give it a try. I removed all the explicit access modifiers that are actually default from ID3 renamer‘s code base a start. Well, after working with it some time, I didn’t noticed anything confusing. There’s only couple of default rules, so it’s not like you would need to learn a lot of new stuff. And, for me, because there’s less text in source code, it looks more readable for me, especially if I’m just checking something out using notepad-like (no highlighting) viewer.

I’m now following this “rule” for every new code I’m writing. I like it when I spin my head around something that looks completely useless to think about, for a first sight, but later shows up to be a good idea or true.