>In my book such access paths should be shortened/automated, yes, but not via function or method call but by compiler constants -
>skip the overhead of calling in the next stack level (yes, I know without parameters calling is much faster...)
>If you keep all constants in upper case, whenever a constant shouts repeatedly in the code I am working on, I automatically cache the (possibly reached via long and convoluted way) access result in a local var ;-)

If it was possible to make them constant, with a predictable value known at compile time, then these would be constants. Life, however, has its own opinion and in many places we can't even have buttons, we must install a zipper. Flexibility frowns upon constants.