On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:48:57 +1100, Timon Gehr <timon.g...@gmx.ch> wrote:
Having parameter names contribute to the interface means that all
developers need to spend time thinking about the best possible names for
their function parameters.
And that's a bad thing, right?
Named parameters do have the issue that once released, it is can be costly
to change the names. It therefore is important that library developers
take enough time to consider parameter names, much in the same manner as
they are currently consider existing exposed names.
To assist those developers, a name deprecation facility could be
introduced to alert users of pending removal of old names. This would of
course only be of interest to those developers who choose to use named
parameters in their code.
There is a similar issue with positional parameters; once released, the
library developer would be unwise to alter the order of parameters. But
somehow, we have managed to educate ourselves so as to (mostly) avoid this
problem.
In general, I'd support optional named parameters and would encourage
their usage in those situations where it makes source code more
understandable to other readers.
--
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
