Getters vs. public final fields in records

[Andrew Cave]

What is the motivation for defining fields as private and generating
getters in records, as opposed to public fields?

My reason for preferring public fields: Getters for immutable fields
interact poorly with static analysis. e.g. null safety — it is not obvious
that the following is null-safe:

if (r.foo() != null) r.foo().bar();

While the following can be statically deduced as null-safe when foo is a
final field:

if (r.foo != null) r.foo.bar();

I’m sure public final fields open more opportunities for compiler
optimization as well.
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