This is a weird answer. In TUPLE, items are also accessed through functions, but they are shown in the debugger. The fact that in the Eiffel class this property is accessed through a function and not an attribute is just anecdotal. In fact I'm convinced that this feature should be built-in in FreeELKS and some compilers (including gec) may decide to implement it internally as an attribute, and some others (like ISE) as the first slot of a Special-like structure. But to come back to my request, I think in the same way it is important to save this value in a Storable file, it is important to show it in the debugger.