Question: There are situations where I declare member variables at the top of my class and then also declare a property to access or set that member variable, but I ask myself if the property is necessary if it variable is only going to be accessed and set from within the class and no where else, so what is the advantage of using a property to access and set a member variable instead of just doing it directly to the member variable itself. Here is an example:

```
public class Car
{

    int speed; //Is this sufficient enough if Car will only set and get it.

    public Car(int initialSpeed)
    {
        speed = initialSpeed;
    }

    //Is this actually necessary, is it only for setting and getting the member
        //variable or does it add some benefit to it, such as caching and if so,
        //how does caching work with properties.
    public int Speed 
    {
        get{return speed;}
        set{speed = value;}
    }

        //Which is better?
        public void MultiplySpeed(int multiply)
        {
            speed = speed * multiply; //Line 1
            this.Speed = this.Speed * multiply; //Line 2

            //Change speed value many times
            speed = speed + speed + speed;
            speed = speed * speed;
            speed = speed / 3;
            speed = speed - 4;

        }
}

```

In the above, if I don't have the property Speed to set and get the variable speed, and I decide to change int speed to int spd, I will have to change speed to spd everywhere it is used, however, if I use a property such as Speed to set and get speed, I will just have to change speed to spd in the get and set of the property, so in my MutilplySpeed method, stuff like above this.Speed = this.Speed + this.Speed + this.Speed will not break.

Answer: 
The fact is, there is not a lot of difference between a publicly declared field and a public property with a private backing store if there is no extra logic. That being said, it is still considered best practice to use properties.

And before everybody jumps on me about extensibility, remember that if you do later need to add functionality, you can keep the name with the property and introduce a new name for the backing store so it's not a breaking change.
In my opinion the language design is broken. There should not be two ways of doing things that have so much semantic overlap. Properties/Fields should have seamlessly provided the benefits of eaither approach depending on how they are used. If the program makes minimal use of Property features they should act the same way as fields. There should furthermore not be a need to declare empty get; and set; methods in this case. The differences strike me as artificial.

It's a great language; and pretty clean for the most part. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be improved upon "next time".