This guy is a moron.

When he want's to introduce a getter later, he has to change all the uses of that variable and potentially breaking code of your customers if you're programming a library someone else uses.

I agree, it's a lot to type, but that's a mistake of the langauge.

In C# it would just be

public int TheData { get; set; }

You can use it like a normal variable.

You can later implement logic into the getter/setter without Breaking any code.

You can have a breakpoint in the getter/setter, which helps you to debug why and where the property unexpectedly gets changed.