Is there any benefit to declaring a private property with a getter and setter?

Question

I am reviewing another developer's code and he has written a lot of code for class level variables that is similar to the following:

    /// <summary>
    /// how often to check for messages
    /// </summary>
    private int CheckForMessagesMilliSeconds { get; set; }

    /// <summary>
    /// application path
    /// </summary>
    private string AppPath { get; set; }

Doesn't coding this way add unnecessary overhead since the variable is private?

Am I not considering a situation where this pattern of coding is required for private variables?

Answer 1

That's like saying private methods aren't beneficial since they add unnecessary overhead and no one outside the class is going to use them.

Properties give you one point of contact between a variable and the rest of your code. In the future, you might want to add error checking or update some other value whenever the variable changes, and properties will let you do that.