Re: Keyword Arguments

Sorry you see it as an attack, I'm merely trying to have a discussion with technical merit.

Regards,

Jeremy Tregunna


On Saturday, 9 June, 2012 at 5:22 PM, Kurtis Rainbolt-Greene wrote:

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> Thanks for the discussion Jeremy, but I don't think there's much else for me to say. I tried to be civil, but you make things difficult when you continually use the phrase "red herring" incorrectly as a means of dismissing my argument. It also doesn't help that your fallback seems to be attacking me and I'm just not up for that kind of thing. Good luck.
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> Still open to others ideas on the original topic.
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> On Sat, Jun 9, 2012 at 6:10 PM, Jeremy Tregunna <[email protected] (mailto:[email protected])> wrote:
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> > On Saturday, 9 June, 2012 at 4:48 PM, Kurtis Rainbolt-Greene wrote:
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> > > > Changed the arguments? Yes of course, reordered them? Not once, ever.
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> > > Still doesn't make it a red herring.
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> > Then we should agree to disagree on this point and move on.
> > > > How does keyword arguments help solve that problem?  
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> > > It doesn't solve that problem, but then I don't think I said it did. Here's the problems it solves:
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> > >   1. I have to order my arguments correctly
> > If you aren't doing this already, I don't think you have what it takes to be a programmer. Following instruction is part of problem solving, which is at the core of software development.  
> > >   2. I have no context for the values I'm passing
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> > You seem to think that I advocate many argument messages, which I don't. I've been very public on this list and others quite to the contrary. So much so that my language Acute, has a syntactic extension to Io (Jan-Paul was actually the one who wrote the parser support for it) that explicitly forbids multiple arguments. In these cases, it's a non-issue. If you can't make complex methods that require more than 2 arguments, you're probably design ing your programs wrong. I'm not saying you can reduce everything to a one arg send, but I think if you're doing more than that, you probably are being lazy and not building a proper data structure to pass in.  
> > >   3. I have to look at the method definition to understand what value goes in what position
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> > Not necessarily, you could also look at the docs. Either way, you have to look at one or the other to know what the keywords are. I don't see how it differs. It's the same cognitive load, in different places. Again, red herring.  
> > > I can't tell you how it solves problems that I haven't said it solves.
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> > I didn't claim you said it solved those problems, but given some of your other assertions, I figure d it was worth asking.  
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> > > > You'll never have to do it again either.   
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> > > This is an entirely separate argument, but this doesn't help at all. I've pointed this out a few times: Implementing syntax sugar like this only makes things worse. By adding this on my own to my own Io implementation I now run into two problems:  
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> > >   1. My Io suddenly behaves differently from other people's Io. For instance, code I use this in will not run on other Io interpretors without first having them change and recompile their Io interpretor.  
> > Then include your extension along side your program, problem solved. They'll get your version for your objects, and everyone's happy.  
> > >   2. Other implementations of Map literals are now barriers to entry for projects. I will either have to conform to their implementation, for their project only, or write an additional implementation of my own.
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> > No you don't, you expect a Map object, and you use the Map APIs internally. The lexer translates the literal into a valid series of message sends (specifically, a curlyBrackets message send, which returns a Map). Other implementations of Map literals would also return a Map object conceivably (otherwise they're doing it wrong), so again, it's a non-issue.
> > > Saying "Io doesn't have Map literals" is not a another way of saying "Please, give me another random way to implement Map literals on my own project/library/interpretor."
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> > We've already had this argument, to which you stormed away all pissed. Let 's not do it again.  
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> > Regards,
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> > Jeremy Tregunna  
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> --  
> Kurtis Rainbolt-Greene, Hacker
> Difference Engineers, LLC
> 643 Magazine St. #102
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>