Is using get set properties of C# considered good practice?

Question

my question is simple, is using the get set properties of C# considered good, better even than writing getter and setter methods? When you use these properties, don't you have to declare your class data members as public ? I ask this because my professor stated that data members should never be declared as public, as it is considered bad practice.

This....

class GetSetExample
{
    public int someInt { get; set; }
}

vs This...

class NonGetSetExample
{
    private int someInt;
}

Edit:

Thanks to all of you! All of your answers helped me out, and I appropriately up-voted your answers.

Answer 1

This:

class GetSetExample
{
    public int someInt { get; set; }
}

is really the same as this:

class GetSetExample
{
    private int _someInt;
    public int someInt {
        get { return _someInt; }
        set { _someInt = value; }
    }
}

The get; set; syntax is just a convenient shorthand for this that you can use when the getter and setter don't do anything special.

Thus, you are not exposing a public member, you are defining a private member and providing get/set methods to access it.