You need reflection if the type of object you're comparing doesn't have that attribute, and only half the subclasses do. You then have to inspect the actual cl

You need reflection if the type of object you're comparing doesn't have that attribute, and only half the subclasses do. You then have to inspect the actual class to see if the attribute exists before you can access it, and the code to do that is so ugly it would take less time to go edit the base class and constructors to give them all the attribute. This is the hassle that perl is avoiding, in the same way that JavaScript would avoid it. Every object is just a collection of attributes and you can access them by name. It's not as efficient as structs or interfaces, but it's very convenient for prototyping.