Disclaimer: For Object Oriented Programming aficionados :)

Alok Themka, a Bangalore-based software engineer working at Infosys, was in for a different kind of code review today, when workers allegedly from Congress barged into his cubicle and demanded that he modify the definition of his C++ class ‘India’ by making ‘Vadra’ a private member, instead of the public member that he had declared it as, earlier.

“This is ridiculous. This will change a lot of things in the way my code runs. I tried reasoning with them to reach a compromise; I asked them if we could make him a ‘protected’ member, because that way my code changes would be significantly lesser. But they just wouldn’t listen. They didn’t budge from my cube until I made the code change, sent it for review and committed my transaction,” Alok recalls.

Alok’s original code:

Alok’s modified code:

“The craziness didn’t stop there,” continued Alok. “I told them that in C++, by default, unless under an access specifier (the labels ‘private’, ‘public’, or ‘protected’), class members are private. But even that didn’t convince them. I had to explicitly add a “private” access specifier for the Vadra member. This code change has now affected a lot of other programs that use my object. A lot of bugs have been filed and all the developers are cursing me non-stop now,” a stressed Alok broke down.

“And just when I hoped to de-stress at home by spending some quality time with my wife, she told me that she was attacked today by a few motorists near the vegetable market. They left her jewellery untouched but snatched her bag of onions and fled. Terrible day all around,” he concluded.