Property discussion wrap-up

[Rob T]

On Monday, 28 January 2013 at 04:40:34 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> I'm not convinced that's a bad thing. I've come to realize 
> functions and variables _are_ different.

The behavior of the variable seems to be a subset of what the 
function does, i.e., they are both the exact same thing except a 
function does not have a fixed implied implementation or a fixed 
implied data store, and the variable is the smallest reducible 
abstraction layer - provided that you do not dig any deeper into 
the machine code implementation.

I think the reason why removal of empty paren's enjoys a level of 
favor, is because it removes a difference between a variable and 
a function that serves only an artificial purpose instead of a 
real one, thus removal is more of a relief than a burden.

The edge case breakages happen where the assumed differences 
between function and variable were depended on, so resolving edge 
case problems really should be done at the high level rather than 
at the low level otherwise we're not really fixing anything, 
we're just shifting the complexity around, removing it from one 
level and piling it back on at another level.

--rt