In object-oriented design, a property exposes computed or existing state through attribute-like access, signaling that reading it is cheap, deterministic, and side-effect-free, whereas a method signals that work, potential failure, or asynchronous behavior may occur. Properties are implemented via the descriptor protocol, which defines custom behavior for reading and/or assigning an attribute, and may be read-only (getter only) or read-write (getter plus setter), but never write-only. This distinction belongs to the domain of object-oriented software design and API design in Python, relating to broader principles of encapsulation, abstraction (e.g., structural typing via protocols), and separation of concerns between state access and I/O or side-effecting operations.
In object-oriented design, a property exposes computed or existing state through attribute-like access, signaling that reading it is cheap, deterministic, and side-effect-free, whereas a method signa…