• Kagamin <spam here.lot> Jul 28 2009

Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:

Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:

 Might be because (a) we aren't getting our priorities right, (b) we 
 ascribe more to properties than what the compiler really makes of them.
 
 At the end of the day, a property is a notational convenience. Instead 
 of writing:
 
 obj.set_xyz(5);
 int a = obj.get_xyz();
 
 properties allow us to write:
 
 obj.xyz = 5;
 int a = obj.xyz;
 
 Just to be 100% clear, I agree that the convenience is great. But I 
 don't know why the hell I need to learn a whole different syntax for 
 *defining* such things, when the compiler itself doesn't give a damn - 
 it just blindly rewrites the latter into something like the former.


May be namespace states your complaints. It doesn't add a whole new syntax,
only kinda one extra level of indirection, naturally reusing existing feature
of operator overloading, and I think it should look natural to compiler too:
it's the same as operator overloading, compiler already does it.

And calling properties is only one aspect of the problem. The other is
declaration. You heard it: implicit backing storage, default trivial
implementation, type consistency. We don't have problems with calling
properties. In fact complaints about current design originates from problems
with property declaration: the problem is compiler doesn't know what is a
function and what is a property.