Scala (and likely Ruby) have a very specific reason for doing this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_access_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_

Scala (and likely Ruby) have a very specific reason for doing this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_access_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_access_principle It does put more onus on the API implementer to be careful about hiding non-trivial work, like you say.