Deprecate convenience methods on Instrument classes

[jenshnielsen]

Following the discussion in #6080 I think we should consider getting rid of these methods on the instrument classes.

All of this functionality can be done in ways that is more obvious, direct and more frequently used

E.g. parameter and functions can be looked up from the parameters and functions delegate attr dicts if you need to look them up dynamically.

• Fix any use of this in qcodes
• Should check agains contrib drivers and perhaps zhinst-qcodes and others
• Newsfragment if we want to merge this

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Attention: Patch coverage is 77.77778% with 2 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.

Project coverage is 67.14%. Comparing base (698ce3d) to head (67ebf22).

Files	Patch %	Lines
src/qcodes/instrument_drivers/tektronix/AWG5014.py	50.00%	2 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main    #6086      +/-   ##
==========================================
+ Coverage   66.11%   67.14%   +1.02%     
==========================================
  Files         352      352              
  Lines       32121    32125       +4     
==========================================
+ Hits        21238    21570     +332     
+ Misses      10883    10555     -328     

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[astafan8]

I support this deprecation. The only usefulness related to this that I can recall is calling parameters/methods/functions on channel lists, but that I already implemented and work for both proper parameters and bound methods (right?)

[jenshnielsen]

I support this deprecation. The only usefulness related to this that I can recall is calling parameters/methods/functions on channel lists, but that I already implemented and work for both proper parameters and bound methods (right?)

Yes, there was a limitation where you could not call a method on more than one channel (which was an advantage of a qcodes function) but that has since been lifted.