As said, it is a matter of style. I rather use accessor methods (private mostly) because of lazy initialization. If you don't use lazy initialization, and always have valid objects in the instance variables, then you can use direct variable access or simply a message send.
I also choose message sends because I can track local senders, and refactor mercilessly. But it also depends on the tool set you have, in some refactoring browsers you can see which methods "read" an inst var and also refactor inst var names on a whole hierarchy (or package). Best regards, Esteban A. Maringolo _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project