21 Answers. I prefer such helper methods to be private static ; which will make it clear to the reader that they will not modify the state of the object.

Are helper methods usually private?

event other than a common name prefix. The private attribute is well-suited to hiding helper methods that aren't required in subclasses. ... Hence, an overridden public method must be declared as public. On the other hand, an overridden protected method may be declared as public.

Should method be public or private?

The rule is that a method should be made provided unless it is needed. One of the main reasons for this is that in a future release of an API etc., you can always make a private function public, but you can almost never make a previous public function private without breaking existing code.