byKey and byValue: properties or methods?

[Alvaro]

El 18/01/2012 21:37, Nick Sabalausky escribió:
> "Nick Sabalausky"<a at a.a>  wrote in message
> Plus I've spent time in other langauges where using a function name without
> parens is the way to refer to a function itself, rather than invoke the
> function. That's something I very much like: "foo" refers to the function,
> "foo()" calls the function. Period. End of story. But in D, while "foo()"
> calls a function, refering to a function is a mess: usually it's "&foo", but
> if you're aliasing it or passing it as a template alias parameter than it's
> "foo". But then if you use "foo" in other places, it calls the function
> instead of referring to it! Bleh!!! Messy, messy.

Exactly, to my eyes the () is what says "execute!", what triggers the 
action, so:

f = func; // even if not in D, looks like getting the function itself (a 
pointer to it)

x = func(); // looks like "execute func" and assign its ret value to x

even with void returning functions:

doThat(); // the () is like "Action!"

In fact, why not get rid of the & to get a reference to a function?

So my vote is: properties: always without (), methods: always ()