From a scripter's standpoint, there is very little difference -- one uses parentheses, one doesn't. From a linguistic and design standpoint, I enjoy having properties of objects accessible as such. It feels right. To my thinking, functions should exist to perform operations or make checks on inconstant data, not to describe something.
Prior to proxy records existing, everything was a function, but now we have this delightfully appropriate way of accessing this data, and I feel that ASH should use it rather than continue making functions for everything. I would personally like to take advantage of redundancy to phase out all ASH functions that simply deliver data which could be in a proxy field, but I realize that is probably a pipe dream.