A common misconception when learning to program is that all variables should automatically be made public, but in general, this is not a good idea. In my experience, variables should be thought of as protected and private from the start, and only made public if necessary. One way you'll see experienced programmers protect their data is through manager classes, and since we want to build good habits, we'll be following suit. Think of manager classes as a funnel where important variables and methods can be accessed safely.Â
When I say safely, I mean just that, which might seem unfamiliar in a programming context. However, when you have different classes communicating and updating data with each other, things can get messy. That's why having a single contact point, such as a manager class, can keep this to a minimum. We'll get into how to do that effectively in the following section.
