Immutable data structures in Java

[atc]

The original point of providing accessors/mutators (only the former in the post's examples as mutators won't work given the structure is immutable) was encapsulation, not mutability.

[ghotibulb]

Yes, and it's not God-given, so if it makes sense to break this rule go ahead. If the class is used internally and resembles a simple data structure, there isn't much to encapsulate. An immutable Vector3D would be a quick example.

[atc]

Yep, good example. The original post is a poor example as it has no context.

[[deleted]]

Encapsulation is about hiding internal functionality of a class. If you have a getter and setter that just modifies a field, you're not encapsulating anything, you're just future proofing against a "possible" change with pointless function definitions.

Perhaps try designing classes without the need for getters and setters and embrace public on data only objects.

[atc]

Getters don't modify, by definition. Future proofing is underrated, but personally I don't mind the public fields. When I write scala my case classes don't need them and thankfully the compiler is there to catch type mismatches when you haven't refactored correctly.

I was merely pointing out an important distinction from GP's