Question: I figured I would ask... but is there a way to have the Get part of a property available as public, but keep the set as private?

Otherwise I am thinking I need two properties or a property and a method, just figured this would be cleaner.

Answer: 
One additional tweak worth mentioning: I'm not sure if this is a .NET 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010 feature, but if you're using both you don't need to declare the **value** parameter for the setter/mutator block of code:

```
Private _name As String

Public Property Name() As String
    Get
        Return _name
    End Get
    Private Set
        _name = value
    End Set
End Property

```
If you are using VS2010 or later it is even easier than that

```
Public Property Name as String

```

You get the private properties and Get/Set completely for free!

see this blog post: [Scott Gu's Blog](http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/automatic-properties-collection-initializers-and-implicit-line-continuation-support-with-vb-2010)