4 ms·

It's a small thing, but function/method overloading and default arguments. Any modern language (hi Rust) without such basic programmer conveniences irritates me

• shakna 10y ago
  Curious to see your opinion on this: Java's overloading syntax always annoyed me as being overly verbose. But what if you accidentally overload? How do you think it should look?
  • ekimekim 10y ago
    In my experience, most cases of overloading are trying to achieve one of two things: * An argument with a default value: foo(string bar), foo(string bar, string baz) * An argument which can be of two or more types: foo(string bar), foo(byte[] bar) I believe the first problem is better solved by an optional/default argument language feature (or in a pinch, a sentinel value). I believe the second problem is better solved by either using a dynamic language, or an expressive type system that lets you say what you mean, either via polymorphism or union types. For the remaining cases it's probably acceptable to have a second function with a slightly different name. While we're on the subject: Keyword-specified arguments are a major quality-of-life improvement, especially once you have large signatures with many defaults. I see no reason why all languages shouldn't adopt python-style foo(x, y, abc=123, xyz=456). DoThing(myflag=False) is generally much clearer than DoThing(False).