"Nick Sabalausky" <a...@a.a> wrote in message news:hjtl33$1da...@digitalmars.com... > "Andrei Alexandrescu" <seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org> wrote in message > news:hjtet5$111...@digitalmars.com... >> Nick Sabalausky wrote: >>> "Andrei Alexandrescu" <seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org> wrote in message >>> news:hjtcbd$r0...@digitalmars.com... >>>> Nick Sabalausky wrote: >>>>> And yes, I already pointed out that would make it a no-argument >>>>> function. And that's precisely my point. If we accept that it's bad to >>>>> paint a car via its "@property" wheel, then how can we possibly accept >>>>> this to not be just as bad?: >>>>> >>>>> auto car = new Car(); >>>>> auto wheel = car.getWheel_ThisIsAFunctionNotAProperty(); >>>>> wheel.paintTheCar(); >>>> Because a function doesn't attempt to emulate a field. >>>> >>> >>> D's approach to properties *forces* functions to emulate fields. >> >> Unfortunately not. It forces nothing. That's my problem with the >> feature - it's nothing more than fostering a convention. >> > > A programming language *is* a set of enforced conventions. When something > either can't be enforced mechanically (ex: accurate and meaningful > variable names), or has real practical value in not having an enforced > convention (ex: user-definable variable names, free-form whitespace, > underscores in numeric literals), that's when it's left to the users to > make up their own arbitrary and likely-conflicting conventions. Arbitrary > freedoms just for the sake of it: great in real life, lousy in a > programming language. > > If we don't enforce the convention of (non-property) functions being > called with parens, the only things gained besides that useless "arbitrary > freedom in a programming language just for the sake of it" is a couple > fewer keystrokes and an extremely minuscule reduction in alleged "noise" > (the usefulness of which is easily canceled out by the fact that reduction > in inconsistency improves readability too). >
We can keep dancing around it with different evidence, metaphors and philosophies all we want, but the bottom line is, omittable parens are a feature, and they just happen to be a feature that 1. causes problems and 2. provides extremely minimal benefits. And what do we do with features that cause problems and provide extremely minimal benefits? We yank 'em.
