DIP64: Attribute Cleanup

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Sun, 22 Jun 2014 00:12:20 +0000
Mason McGill via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:

> "Attribute" and "property" are pretty much synonyms in English,
> and it always seemed strange to me that D had to define them as
> different--yet confusingly similar--entities.

They're not even vaguely similar in D. A property is a member of a struct or
class which is a variable or a function which emulates a variable, whereas
attributes are annotations put on symbols (currently just classes, structs,
and functions AFAIK) which indicate extra information to the compiler and to
type introspection.

So, while I can see why you might dislike the fact that attribute and property
do not mean the same thing in D, they're _not_ at all similar it how they're
used, so I find it very odd if anyone is confusing them. And it's not like D
pioneered these meanings for attributes and properties. C# uses them for the
same things.

- Jonatahn M Davis