Make dur a property?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 1/23/13 5:40 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:14:21 -0500
> Andrei Alexandrescu<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org>  wrote:
>
>> On 1/23/13 1:48 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> Having the *caller* decide whether something is a property or not
>>> makes as much sense as having the caller decide the function's name,
>>> signature and semantics.
>>
>> No. The caller does get to decide a variety of syntactic aspects of
>> the invocation.
>>
>
> Yes, but it's unfortunate that includes a part of the syntax that
> carries semantic/conceptual implications for something (action or
> data) that is already *inherently* determined by writer of the *callee*.

"Semantic" and "conceptual" sound interesting but are a bit out of 
context here. We're talking simple syntax here, and in particular an 
option available to other languages already.

>>> If anything, that's an issue with template syntax, it has nothing
>>> to do with properties, let alone the beloved practice of abusing
>>> properties for the sake of things that clearly are not properties.
>>
>> The implied assumption here is that if it doesn't have parens it's a
>> property. Well it's a function call.
>>
>
> Right, it's a function call. So what in the world do we gain by
> allowing the caller to make it look like something it isn't? Nothing.

Never answer your own rhetorical question :o).


Andrei