title: Ruby: How to make only one single method in a class public?
body: <p>Every discussion of private vs. public Ruby methods in a class shows how to declare all following methods private (or public or protected):</p>
  <pre><code>class airplane
    def preflight
    end
  
    def engine_start
      return unless preflight_complete?
    end
  
    private
  
    def preflight_complete?
    end
  end
  </code></pre>
  <p>That works great most of the time, where you put all your public methods at the top, and all your private methods down below.</p>
  <p>I've got a good-sized class with three public methods, and a few dozen private ones. The private ones are all sequenced in a logical manner for developer comfort.</p>
  <p>Now, I find there are 2 or 3 formerly-private methods I need to make public. I don't want to pull them to the top, away from their contextual neighbors. I also find it cludgey to flop back and forth between <code>public</code> and <code>private</code> each time. This is particularly annoying if the screen size pushes the <code>public</code> flag out of view and it's not obvious that a second or third new method are unintentionally public just because I inserted them after the loner public method.</p>
  <p>So, is there a graceful way to avoid flopping public/private back and forth to make just one method public?</p>