difference between a getter method and a method which returns the state of an instance variable?

Question

I am reading through the Guava library, and I keep running into methods that look something like this:

@Override public int size() {
  return size;
}

What is the difference (strategically, conventionally, etc) between the above and the following?

@Override public int getSize() {
  return size;
}

Or is there no difference? Is it just shorthand?

Answer 1

One form isn't using JavaBeans conventions. Functionally speaking, systems that expect you to follow those conventions will not work or be very cumbersome to set up if you use non-conventional getters/setters for your beans, but if you're not, then there's no real difference.

Since Guava has a lot of collections, and the Collection interface actually defines a size() method, my gut tells me that Guava is more inclined to follow the Collection interface than JavaBeans conventions.