Is it a bad practice to access a data item directly?

Question

I remember how the professor said it was bad practice. But it makes going through code a lot less tedious. I just make out the comments about the pros and cons:

Friend Class MyClass
 Private isEmpty As Boolean
 Public Property IsEmpty() As Boolean
  Get
   Return isEmpty
  End Get
  Set(ByVal Value As Integer)
   isEmpty = value
  End Set
 End Property
 Public Sub MyMethod()
  ''//Is this more correct:
  If Me.IsEmpty() Then
   ''//Do something.
  End If
  ''//Is this bad practice?:
  If isEmpty Then 
   ''//Do something.
  End If
 End Sub
End Class 

Answer 1

If you created a property to access the private member variable "isEmpty" than "yes", I would use the property inside the class itself if you have no reason to.

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Answer 2

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Answer 3

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