This got me curious, so I tried it out.

I was unable to put a synchronized onto the field directly:

  error: modifier synchronized not allowed here
    public synchronized final Object field;

But when I locked it in code:

  synchronized (field) {
    while(true) {
      ..

I was still able to access the synchronized field directly without triggering a deadlock - whereas a getter() could be synchronized and trigger a deadlock.

In any case, the article already made a strong points for immutability so you don't need to mess around with deadlocking crap.

They're saying multiple things can synchronize on the same public field. Same reason you don't want to use this.

Although I suppose they could mean the concept and not the keyword. A field might not be thread safe and there's no way for an object to guarantee thread safe access of to a field.

Deadlocking was raised as the objection to using public instead of getter. But in regard to deadlocking, using public is strictly better than a getter.

You have to take a lock in order to deadlock in the public version. In the getter version, you can take a lock without realising it and then deadlock.

nope, sorry, that's my mistake. I'm misremembering java, it has been too long :) thanks for the correction!