Completely agree, the implementer of date had many options. choosing + character, they apparently went for conciseness instead of convention. Not sure what yo

Completely agree, the implementer of date had many options. choosing + character, they apparently went for conciseness instead of convention. Not sure what you are disagreeing with though, I made no claims that someone had to use +, or positional argument in general. Just an observation about what might have guided the design process.