Whilst reading a great article on getter and setter methods, I came across a small quotation that perfectly encapsulated the problems I see with a lot of code at my current client: Developers by their nature have a desire to hang on to global data, and to create global methods.

In 1989, Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham taught classes on OO design, and they had problems getting people to abandon the get/set mentality. They characterized the problem as follows:

The most difficult problem in teaching object-oriented programming is getting the learner to give up the global knowledge of control that is possible with procedural programs, and rely on the local knowledge of objects to accomplish their tasks. Novice designs are littered with regressions to global thinking: gratuitous global variables, unnecessary pointers, and inappropriate reliance on the implementation of other objects.

This problem is particularly common where I am at present as a large part of the development work is in MOSS 2007, which encourages global data and methods in a large number of insidious ways.

I'm now off to re-read Beck and Cunningham in more detail ... but in the meantime, pretty please MS, could you stop encouraging bad practices!