if(a.NumberOfEmployees > 5){
ApexPages.addMessage(new ApexMessage(WARNING, ‘OMG’));
}

http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/pages/index_Left.htm#StartTopic=Content/pages_compref_additional_controller.htm

In truth, for any language you should design your getters so that you don’t need to depend on execution order, primarily because execution order bugs are so darn hard to debug, and let’s not start on their tendency to arise and disappear spontaneously!!

Personally I would:
1) Take advantage of the fact any time you reference a property (accounts in this case) in your controller it runs the getter method (avoiding any execution order issues)
2) Keep the show warning logic in it’s own setter method (each function has one purpose which makes it easier to understand)


public class GetOrderFix {

public List accounts {
get {
if(accounts == null) {
accounts = [Select Id, Name, NumberOfEmployees from Account limit 5];
}
return accounts;
}
set;
}
}


For example, just for readability, I often do my variables like this.

public Boolean someFlag {get; set;} {someFlag = false;}

It all should run before the page loads and, as long as I don’t depend on the someFlag variable inside the constructor, I should be ok. However, just wondering if you came across any quirks.

@Peter C, I think this adds a bit to much complexity for my liking. It can easily become a giant spaghetti mess when getters start calling getters.

There are many different ways to approach this problem. One of the reasons I ran into the problem above was at the time there were no apex properties which can greatly simplify getting and setting. Another solution, and what I would probably do today is something similar to this:

public class GetOrderFix{
 
	public Boolean showLargeAcctWarning{get; set;}
	public List<Account> accts {get; set;}
 
	public GetOrderFix(){ 
		buildAcctList();
	}
 
	public void buildAcctList(){
		accts = new List<Account>();
 
		for(Account a : [Select Id, Name, NumberOfEmployees from Account limit 5]){
			accts.add(a);
			if(a.NumberOfEmployees > 5){
				showLargeAcctWarning = true;
			}
		}
		return accts;
	}
}