byKey and byValue: properties or methods?

[Peter Alexander]

On 17/01/12 10:11 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> You would need to come up with some really solid arguments why it should be
> thrown out (and what we should do instead) and get both Walter and Andrei (if
> not the community at large) to agree that they not only prefer your proposal
> but that it's worth the issues that the changes are going to cause at this
> stage.

There's a few good reasons to throw it out:

1. Avoids pointless discussions like this one. These discussions add 
nothing, it's just mindless bike shedding.

2. The -property flag *creates* a new kind of error, but doesn't 
actually help find real problems with your code. Without properties, 
member function access would always be a.b(), and this artificial error 
could be avoided.

3. Properties introduce another thing to remember, with no value ("was 
it byKeys, or byKeys()?"). Without properties, it would be byKeys(). No 
need to remember.

4. Properties obfuscate code. Is (a.b = c) a variable assignment or 
arbitrary function call? Who knows! Is a.b an actual variable? Can I 
write &a.b to get its address, or is it a function masquerading as a 
variable?

5. One less language feature to implement, learn, document, debug, and 
discuss.

Is it practical or realistic to throw it out at this stage? I don't 
know. But there are reasons to.