I personally don’t use getters and setters whenever it’s possible (meaning : I don’t use any framework who needs it, like Struts for instance).
I prefer writing immutable objects (public final fields) when possible, otherwise I just use public fields : less boiler plate code, more productivity, less side effects. The original justification for get/set is encapsulation (make your objects as shy as possible), but in fact, I don’t need it very often.
In Effective Java, Joshua Bloch makes this compelling recommendation :
Classes should be immutable unless
there’s a very good reason to make
them mutable… If a class cannot be
made immutable, limit its mutability
as much as possible.
In the same book, he also says (but I don’t want to copy the whole book here) :
The JavaBeans pattern has serious
disadvantages.
I totally aggre with that, since JavaBeans were originally intended for a very narrow problem domain : manipulation of graphical components in an IDE. It is a bad practice to use one solution designed for solving another problem.