Regarding your (and my) last point, I mean confusing in the sense that if you are returning some object with (as in his example, differently named) references t

Regarding your (and my) last point, I mean confusing in the sense that if you are returning some object with (as in his example, differently named) references to internal functions, it only makes it more difficult to track down code later. Worse for the coder, worse for the maintainer, and unnecessary.