How would you access Object properties from within an object method?

This has religious war potential, but it seems to me that if you're using a getter/setter, you should use it internally as well - using both will lead to maintenance problems down the road (e.g. somebody adds code to a setter that needs to run every time that property is set, and the property is being set internally w/o that setter being called).

Personally, I feel like it's important to remain consistent. If you have getters and setters, use them. The only time I would access a field directly is when the accessor has a lot of overhead. It may feel like you're bloating your code unnecessarily, but it can certainly save a whole lot of headache in the future. The classic example:

Later on, you may desire to change the way that field works. Maybe it should be calculated on-the-fly or maybe you would like to use a different type for the backing store. If you are accessing properties directly, a change like that can break an awful lot of code in one swell foop.