The idea behind “information hiding” – i.e. encapsulating certain methods and properties to users of a class – is a fair idea in theory, but in practice, it’s just too slow. Think about it. If a “public” method just ends up calling some “private” method, that’s just a waste of a call. And if a lot of calls are made to that public method, then that’s a whole lot of wasted calls!

Vlad’s predecessor knew this fact well when he was designing “safety critical” functions for his company’s ------ application. Instead of wasting precious CPU time on “information hiding”, he put in a simple request to users of his class… 

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 *                                UNCLASSIFIED                               *
 *                      CONTAINS SAFETY CRITICAL FUNCTIONS                   *
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                         ------, Copyright ------
  
   1.0    Identification
          ------
  
   2.0    Version Control History
          See below.
  
   3.0    Description
          ----
  
   4.0    Assumptions And Constraints
          This class has all its fields public so you can access them
          directly for fast performance.  But do not modify them when
          accessing them - in order to modify the -----, use the
          methods provided.  This ensures the internal inde-es are updated
          correctly.
  

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