synonyms

[Alex Tweedly]

On 29/06/2017 19:11, Bob Sneidar via use-livecode wrote:
>
>> That's possible in R, Python, CSS, and others, but not natively in LC.
> I suppose lots of things are possible in other languages. Are we trying to be just like all the other languages?
>
No. What we should be trying to do is pick out the best, worthwhile 
features of other languages and see if they fit comfortably within LC.

One aspect of that is whether they will be either confusing to, or be 
sadly missed by, many potential LC converts. So the fact that this 
feature (with variations) occurs in so many other, popular languages is 
relevant - it makes it, IMHO, unlikely they will be confusing to very 
many people coming to LC from other (modern) language backgrounds, and 
it also means they will be missed by many.

Even other languages not in the above list (e.g. Perl) which do *not* 
have named parameters (or keyword args, or ...) do have simple, commonly 
used ways round it - Perl passes arguments as a dictionary (i.e. an 
array in LC terms), and has a simple, clean, succinct way to fill it 
that dictionary either in, or immediately prior to, the function call.  
So the benefits of the mechanism are known to even more people who 
already program in a modern language.


-- Alex.