I wish Ruby had some semantic difference between methods that define functions and methods that define properties.

For me, the difference between the two is that a function does something and a property is a tool for introspection. In other words, a property returns state or data, and a function operates on state or data.

For example, in the Dog class below, the bark method is a function and age is a method.

class Dog
  def bark
    puts 'woof'
  end

  def age
    10
  end
end

In Ruby, there is no difference between the definition of a function and a property.

For example, in a Javascript object, properties and functions are defined and called differently.

var dog = {
  age: 10,
  bark: () => {
    console.log("woof");
  },
};

dog.age;
dog.bark();

Ruby defines properties using instance variables (variables preceded by an @ sign) which can be shared internally inside a class, and externally using get/set methods (or shorthand using attr_reader and attr_writer). This is a great feature and gets us 95% of the way there.

However, from outside an object, attr_reader is indistinguishable from properties that are disguised as methods, and therefore, indistinguishable from functions.

For example, in Ruby, if you were to see this code:

garfield = Cat.new
garfield.present

it is impossible to know if if Cat#present is a function or a property. It is ambiguous whether Cat#present is intended to show off garfield (e.g. to the Queen), or if it's intended to see what kind of treats he likes.

Granted, this example is contrived based on a confusing word that can mean multiple things, but in Javascript, for example, the caller of Cat#present would know if a property or a function was being accessed.

garfield = Cat();
garfield.present; // is a property
garfield.present(); // is a function

As you can see, the additional detail here is the () parentheses at the time of invocation. A function must be called with () or else it returns the function itself. (Python has the same requirement, for the record). Properties, on the other hand, are like Ruby's attr_reader.

Now, of course, a function in Javascript and Python can be used to simply introspect and properties in Ruby can be set to callable anonymous functions, but the goal isn't to discover the flexibility of the language--the more powerful the better, I say--the goal is to make it easier to declare intent.

The interesting thing here is that Ruby already has examples of caring about declaring intent. Predicate method (ending with ?) and Bang methods (ending with !) both exist to declare intent; the former to indicate a boolean return type, the latter to indicate that a safer version of the method exists.

I've seen code that gets around this ambiguity in Ruby methods by including nouns or verbs in method names. For example, object.to_json indicates a function, while object.json is more likely a property with some data.

But in reality, without spelunking into the objects, it is not safe to assume what a method is or does, making it ever-so-slightly harder to create abstractions and simply expose APIs and contracts and interfaces.

The goal also isn't to advocate for Javascript or Python over Ruby. Javascript ES6 classes, for example, have the same issue as far as I understand. And my examples comparing Ruby and Javascript were not entirely analogous.

But it is notable that functions and properties are different things and Ruby methods can be used to make the difference invisible. Not only does that add some insecurity on the part of the users of objects, it creates decisions for the writers of objects and classes also.