to property or function in class object

[james_027]

hi,

i am very new to python, not knowing much about good design. I have an
object here for example a Customer object, where I need to retrieve a
info which has a number of lines of code to get it.

my question is weather what approach should I use? to use the property
which is from the python new class style as I understand or simple use
function that will return the the info I needed.

class Customer(object):

current_balance = property(fget=_get_current_balance)

def _get_current_balance(self):
   # coding here

or

def get_current_balance(self):
   # coding here

While both approach would get the job done, I don't know much about
the performance, benefits, design philosophy between the two approach.
Any lecture will be very appreciated.

Thanks
james