[image] What steps should the Julia community take to bring Julia to the next level of popularity? The inability to use positional arguments with keywords I would love to be able to use keywords with positional arguments. It’s one of my favorite “code should be self-documenting” features.

[image] adienes: I still haven’t seen a single counterargument to the point that the package developer can always choose their API to be kwargs and forward to internal methods with positional args. The problem here isn’t the motivation for the feature — it’s a fine feature for a language to h…

I would love to be able to use keywords with positional arguments. It’s one of my favorite “code should be self-documenting” features. When I started out with Julia, I also thought that was a missing feature (especially coming from Python), but the idea is really not compatible with multiple disp…

[image] What steps should the Julia community take to bring Julia to the next level of popularity? The inability to use positional arguments with keywords This would be a grotesque mis-feature. I fervently hope that nightmare vision will never torment my soul again.

[image] goerz: When I started out with Julia, I also thought that was a missing feature (especially coming from Python), but the idea is really not compatible with multiple dispatch: That’s fine; it just means the positional argument names you use have to be the ones allowed by the method you…

[image] DNF: This would be a grotesque mis-feature. Then don’t use it. But many of us like self-documenting code like we’re used to in Python. I personally can never remember the right order for the arguments in functions like Turing.sample.

That’s not how it works. If this were ever implemented, everyone would be forced to deal with it, that’s one of the things that makes it so evil.

You can always add a method accepting only keyword arguments and forwarding those to positional arguments. I’ve certainly done that on occasion in my own packages. You could even do something crazy like dynamically inspecting the methods table and selecting a method based on matching names (although…

[image] goerz: But the compiler just isn’t going to be able to help you with any of this: you’ll always end up with runtime-dispatch. The compiler could handle it easily (see KeywordCalls.jl, which gives 0-cost keyword dispatch). The fact that keywords force runtime dispatch is because of a h…

[image] DNF: everyone would be forced to deal with it It’s evil to have to read sample(rng=Xoshiro(0), sampler=NUTS(), model=my_loglikelihood) instead of sample(Xoshiro(0), NUTS(), model) ? Even if you don’t like it, then just don’t allow it in your style guide. All I’m saying is that yo…

[image] ParadaCarleton: All I’m saying is that you’re never going to get people to switch over from Python if this feature is missing; of all the things I’ve read someone claim will doom Julia, this is one of the silliest. besides being IMO a much more confusing misfeature than status quo, it…

[image] ParadaCarleton: It’s evil to have to read You choose an example where keywords read well, but most functions have variables that don’t have any reasonable names. It’s evil to have to read +(x=1, y=2) because that’s the can of worms you are opening. Every arbitrarily named argument i…

Naming positional arguments at call site

Internals & Design

DNF September 4, 2023, 7:21pm 3

This would be a grotesque mis-feature. I fervently hope that nightmare vision will never torment my soul again.

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Naming positional arguments at call site

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