Key-value coding and declared properties are orthogonal technologies. You can use KVC whether or not you use properties, and you can use properties whether or not you use KVC. Both, though, make use of a "dot syntax". In the case of KVC, the syntax is used to delimit elements in a key path. It is important to remember that when you directly access a property using the dot syntax, you invoke the receiver's standard accessor methods (as a corollary, to emphasize, the dot syntax does not result in invocation of KVC methods valueForKey: or setValue:forKey:).
