Functions do something, while properties are something.
This is my argument against them. Computed properties do something, they compute a value. This may or may not be cheap and adds surprising behavior to the property. IMO properties should just be cheap accessors to values. If it needs to be computed then seeing a function call can hint the caller may want to cache the value in a variable if they need to use it multiple times. With properties you need to look it up to know it is actually doing work instead of just giving you a value. That is surprising behavior which IMO I dislike in programs.
that we agree on: properties should be cheap to compute.
Making a simple ternary condition as a function instead of property is a wasted opportunity to make its usage cleaner.
Make its usage cleaner? I don’t see how a property does that at all. We are talking about x.foo
vs x.foo()
really. And IMO the latter tells you this is a function that needs to do some work even if that work is very cheap. x.foo
implies that you might be able to set the value as well. But with computed properties maybe not. Which IMO makes the program a bit harder to read and understand as you cannot simply assume it is a simple assignment or field access. It could be a full function call that does different things depending on other values or even if you are setting vs getting the value. I prefer things being more explicit.
Because you’re assuming foo
won’t be renamed when it becomes a function. A function should start with a verb, say get_foo()
, because just foo()
tells me nothing about what the function does (or what to expect as output). If you make it a property, get_
is implicit.
So if the age is computed from the year of birth for example, it’s really e.g. thing.age
or thing.get_age()
- both of which are fine, but I’d pick the property version.