new DIP5: Properties 2

[Bill Baxter]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 6:54 AM, Andrei
Alexandrescu<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>
> Well there are quite a few other things that are arguably against C look and
> feel, such as the scope statement. I've never had a problem understanding
> code because of lacking "()", and I never ever write them.

That may be true, but you are also not an average user by any means.
So surveying yourself may not give so accurate a reflection of
opinions at large.
Like Joel Spoelsky and others say about GUIs -- never take your own
opinion that a GUI you have written is "intuitive".  You need to do at
a minimum a couple of random "hallway checks" -- that is, getting
random people passing by in the hallway to try it out without
explaining it to them.  So far I think we have two people -- you and
Walter -- who think that the current system is good.

I think you're right that people *can* get used to losing the visual
distinction between functions and fields.  But I find the distinction
to be a useful and unobtrusive indication of the programmer's intent.
So I don't see losing the distinction to be worth saving a few
keystrokes.   If there were a distinction then we could be pretty sure
that .empty was a property and .empty() was an action.   Sure I can
get used to having to learn which is which on a per-library basis, but
I don't see why I should consider having to keep more stuff in my head
to be a net win.  In fact I'm kind of envious of those languages where
? and ! can by used in identifiers to indicate predicates and
mutators.

For the same reason I started to dislike like the direction some of
these syntax proposals were taking.  Too much for me to keep in my
head.  But the "property { ... }" syntax is very easy to remember and
doesn't look ugly.

Look, if we add a generic attributes syntax (like @attr) we could
perhaps use it for many of the following:
abstract
deprecated
align
case
debug
default
export
extern
final
lazy
override
package
private
protected
public
scope
shared
unittest
volitile

Storage classes are, in particular, kinds of attributes of a type.
Now we may not want to go so hog wild putting @this and @that
everywhere, but if we did we could get rid of 19 keywords right there,
and add @property also without adding a new keyword.

--bb