Re: Help! Strings -> Numbers

On Thursday, November 21, 2002, at 12:24  AM, Dave Storrs wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 01:29:32AM -0500, Tanton Gibbs wrote:
>> Properties have bothered me, but for a different reason.  It appears 
>> that everyone's answer to everything is "make it a property!" 
>> Properties are just strange to comprehend...they are like hidden 
>> attributes that are squirreled away until you least expect >> them...then
>
> I would say that properties are very powerful and, like most powerful
> things, could easily be abused.

If I'm understanding them correctly, another way to think of runtime 
properties is "dynamic inheritance", or more specifically 
"instance-based inheritance".  When you say:

    $v but foo(5);

You're saying that instance/value $v now inherits the behaviors of 
foo(5), in addition to it's normal behavior.  Well, sortof.

So while they're essential for certain things, I expect they might be 
*much* more expensive (runtime) than either method calls or normal, 
"static" class inheritance.  You're taking the particular 
value/instance and adding another layer of behavior to it -- behavior 
that is only calculable at runtime.  Ouch!

So yeah, I think they should be avoided except when necessary -- to 
make an object do something that is wasn't originally designed to do, 
but not as a syntax for a core feature.  I would hope most of the core 
uses them very sparingly.

MikeL