[robot_no_421]

"As it master, I should be able to force my machine into giving me access of private fields."

If you're writing the code then you can do whatever you want with it. But if I'm writing the code you're using, I want the power to express "the end user cannot use this private field".

You trying to access the private fields in the library I or someone else wrote would be like trying to change a book someone wrote or a painting someone made. It's not the computer restricting you, it's the author of the code.

EDIT: This response was not my finest take.

[alkonaut]

I think the agreement is rather “if you change the private field then there are no longer any guarantees of anything”. Which is fine, I think. And obviously with or without reflection anyone can already modify the private field.

[Quekid5]

It's the shortest path to Hyrum's Law, certainly.

> And obviously with or without reflection anyone can already modify the private field.

This bit, I don't understand. Wouldn't that require unsafe?

EDIT: Just to say: Abstract data types usually require upholding some invariants which all the operations on those data types must uphold at entry/exit. If anyone can do whatever, then what's left othen than just a bag of bytes?

[cryptonector]

But sometimes you might writing a debugger. Reflection is essentially including all the "debug symbols" that you need in order to build a debugger into your application.