Python @property versus method performance - which one to use?

Question

I have written some code that uses attributes of an object:

class Foo:
    def __init__(self):
        self.bar = \"baz\"
myFoo = Foo()
print (myFoo.bar)
         


        

Answer 1

I agree with what most people here have said, I did much measurement when building hydrologic models in Python a couple years ago and found that the speed hit from using @property was completely overshadowed by calculation.

As an example, creating method local variables (removing the "dot factor" in my calculations increased performance by almost an order of magnitude more than removing @property (these results are averaged over a mid-scale application).

I'd look elsewhere for optimization, when it's necessary, and focus initially on getting good, maintainable code written. At this point, if @property is intuitive in your case, use it. If not, make a method.