Rainer Weikusat <rainerweikusat@???> writes:

[...]

> This mechanism as certain tendency make C++ developers go bezerk with a
> particular type of strong rage, but it's entirely usuable in practice,
> although more work than having it all laid out for oneself.

In the interest of fairness: This 'more work' of course translates to
'more opportunities for getting stuff wrong' and there's the additional
problem of "get away with it"-ism, especially in closed source software:
At least some people will - either based on principle[*] or because it
saves them work or they at least believe it will - break every 'softly
imposed' rule the believe to be able to get away with breaking. Hence,
unless the language/ compiler enforces access restrictions to
supposed-to-be internal-use only members of a data structure, people
will ignore them.

[*] I've actually encountered people who refused to comply with
technical documentation on the ground that they aren't taking orders
from strangers ...