On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 11:17:17AM -0500, Dan Sugalski wrote: > In that case they'd correspond to our properties, and I can already > feel a massive terminology disconnect looming. Maybe we should rename > properties and attributes to frobs and thingies, just so there's no > overlap. :(
We could call them houses and hotels - you'd only be allowed attributes after you had 4 properties, and if you want to mortgage, er serialise the object you'd have to hand them all back to the bank, er GC system. Mmm. Maybe that's taking the analogy well beyond breaking point. I've had a look in a thesaurus for words similar to property and attribute, and I can't see much that's good. "idiosyncrasy" is a nice word, but it's 6 syllables, and hard to spell. "satellite" seems quite good for objects and "stuff" that are hangers-on, as does "chattels". I quite liked the idea of "virtue" for a quality, although I'm not sure if Larry would sanction PMCs having vices as well :-) The downside of finding completely new names for these two concepts is that everyone would have to learn what they meant. The upside is that there would be no confusion with every other language's contradictory definitions. Nicholas Clark
