Software Design/Minimize the accessibility of classes and members

Checklist questions:

• Can the class be private to the package (enclosing class)?
• Can the function be private to the class (class and its subclasses, package)?
• Can the field (constant) be private to the class (package)?

This practice corresponds to rule Minimize exposure of members from C++ Core Guidelines.

Why

Minimizing the accessibility of classes, functions, and fields is the primary way of increasing encapsulation of a component, that helps to keep the components loosely coupled and the connascence low. This, in turn, makes understanding, change, testing, and debugging of individual components easier.