Um, those are merlyn's thoughts. ;) Did you mean 'my' thoughts? Let's open that can of worms then. :D

And i do not agree with your two statements being equal. The main reason is because you have two distinct audiences. Someone who just uses a program is not required to have any knowledge of the language, but someone who programs against that language better have knowledge. Further more, someone who accesses the constructor on an instantiated object clearly does not know what they are doing. Unless we are talking about a factory [method] pattern, the constructor should be class method, not an instance method. Try doing this in Java ...

class Foo {
   public static void main(String args[]) {
      Bar bar = new Bar(42);
      System.out.println(bar.foo);
      
      Bar baz = bar.Bar(2112);
      System.out.println(baz.foo);
   }

}
class Bar {
   public int foo;
   public Bar(int foo) {
      this.foo = foo;
   }
}
[download]

class Bar:
   def __init__(self, foo):
      self.foo = foo 

bar = Bar(42)
print bar.foo

baz = bar.__init__(2112)
print baz.foo
[download]

class Bar
   def kind=(f)
      @foo = f
   end
   def kind
      @foo
   end
end

bar = Bar.new
bar.kind = 42
print bar.kind

baz = bar.new
baz.kind = 2112
print baz.kind
[download]

class User;
my ($id, $name, $email);
# look ma, no new!!!

package main;
my $u = User.new('abw', 'Andy Wardley', 'abw@kfs.org');
[download]

package foo;
use strict;
use Carp;

sub new {
   my ($class,$id) = @_;
   croak "can't call new as instance method" if ref($class);
   my $self = {
      id => $id || 42,
   };
   return bless $self,$class;
}
[download]

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)