# Naming positional arguments at call site

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/naming-positional-arguments-at-call-site/103526>\
**Category:** Internals & Design\
**Created:** [September 4, 2023, 7:07pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/naming-positional-arguments-at-call-site/103526 "2023-09-04T19:07:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 67

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**Author:** ![mbauman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mbauman/32/31082_2.png) [@mbauman](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mbauman)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2023, 5:00pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/naming-positional-arguments-at-call-site/103526/67 "2023-09-05T17:00:28Z")

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I suppose there are three things going on here:

1. Some folks here want to be able to **write** functions (that is, literally write — as they develop the code) without worrying about the exact order of the positional args. Just the names are enough, in any order. You’d still need to look up/know the names, but you wouldn’t need to know the order.

2. Some folks here want to be able to **read** function calls as being self-documented, even if the args already match the defined positional order. Comments, variable names, etc, can all do the trick, but, yeah, none are _enforced_ to match the defined argument names.

3. But either way, I fear this is a [PSA: Julia is not at that stage of development anymore](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/psa-julia-is-not-at-that-stage-of-development-anymore/44872) thing. Making a change like this would drastically expand the surface area of every language and package API that’s ever existed in ways that weren’t necessarily intended.

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_[View the full topic](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/naming-positional-arguments-at-call-site/103526)._
