the syntax of various inside-out object modules is just frickin' painful to me

So, specifically, the whole "id $self" stuff? I can see that, though I suspect it's all about what people are used to seeing.

I think the overload-like-a-hash approach will be problematic in the long run because the apparent simplicity masks significant complexity.

Serialization is probably the first place this will really pop up and fail to behave like people expect. What happens when someone tries to throw one of these objects at Data::Dumper et al? What happens when someone tries to create an object on the fly by loading data into a hash reference manually and then blessing it into an object? (E.g. loading YAML or other external config data?)

my $ref = {
    foo => 23,
    bar => 42,
};

bless $ref, "Bar";
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