This completely does not match my experience.

For a random instance, if I initially write the class so that a set of properties are exported based on the structure of the object, and I restructure the object, I can just add a few new methods to calculate the things that AUTOLOADER is not doing for you. As long as you remember that your interface needs to be stable, there is no problem with autogenerating large chunks of that interface. After all - thanks to the same principle that you are trying to invoke - there is no need to know or care about the implementation as long as it does the right thing.

And from a maintainability point of view, autogenerated interfaces can be very, very useful. They can be used to avoid a lot of manual synchronization between pieces of code. (Just try to write a class that proxies off of another transparently without them!) Which is why many OO languages offer equivalents to AUTOLOAD. Perhaps it is called something like method_missing. BFD. It is the same thing and can be used in the same way for about the same things.