Someone saying that having private method is anti-pattern, here is the discussion - http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/01/private-methods-tdd-design Discussion of encapsulation - http://niket-this.blogspot.com/2008/01/encapsulation-does-it-really-exist.html My view on this is that most of the time there's little value in self-encapsulation. The value of encapsulation is proportional to the scope of the data access. Classes are usually small (at least mine are) so direct access isn't going to be an issue within that scope. Most accessors are simple assignments for the setter and retrieval for the getter, so there's little value in using them internally. - https://martinfowler.com/bliki/SelfEncapsulation.html