properties

[Ary Borenszweig]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> On Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:11:09 -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu 
>> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>>> Guess what - they both behave like functions. So their properties are 
>>> an elaborate mechanism that is actually thoroughly unchecked, thus 
>>> going back to what you could do by calling functions. So why the hell 
>>> did they define the feature in the first place? Oh, for allowing 
>>> people to write a.foo() instead of a.foo. You know what, that's a bit 
>>> disappointing for an entire language feature.
>>
>> No, they did it to *force* you to write a.foo instead of a.foo(), to 
>> make it more defined that foo is a field-like entity.
> 
> Which is not, because it can execute arbitrary code that is not 
> restricted in any way. How good a design is that? Back to semantics by 
> convention?

Back to semantics by convention?

Whenever you write *anything*, there's always semantic by convention.

writefln("Foo");

That writefln could just do antyhing with it's argument, maybe return it 
twice. So how do you enforce writefln to actually write something? 
Aaaah... D sucks because it can't enforce that.