I'm not saying never mark methods private. I'm saying the better rule of thumb is to "make methods protected unless there's a good reason not to".

I would like to understand this design then. In my experience it has only served to limit what I can achieve, and gained me no additional benefit.

Patrician IV is an overhauling upgrade to Patrician III; so if you have not played the previous games in the Patrician series, starting with IV is really all you need. Also, the game of Patrician is very straightforward and addicting, so playing previous versions won't offer you anything unseen in Patrician IV.

we have no way to know that the line nameMap[3] = "bob"; isn't somewhere in your program

There are times to stretch individually and as a team, but there are also times to take advantage of what you already know.

You'll usually only take this sales tax deduction if you live in a state that doesn't have state income tax, but it's available to everyone.

XDG stands for X Desktop Group aka freedesktop.org