I work on Hy, a Lisp that compiles to Python AST, and my intuition tells me that it's a bit of a wart too. Particularly how the syntax for calling is conflated

I work on Hy, a Lisp that compiles to Python AST, and my intuition tells me that it's a bit of a wart too. Particularly how the syntax for calling is conflated with the definition and partly in how the arguments are filled in the Call node (basically, left to right). It lets you do things like: >>> def foo(a, b="Default"): ... print(a, b) ... >>> foo(1, 2) (1, 2) >>> foo(1) (1, 'Default') >>> foo(1, b="bar") (1, 'bar') >>> def baz(*args, **kwargs): ... print(args, kwargs) ... >>> args = (1, 2, 3) >>> kwargs = {'foo': "bar"} >>> baz(*args, **kwargs) ((1, 2, 3), {'foo': 'bar'}) It's the first example that kind of seems 'off'. It's probably just cross-polination from my CL experience (which seems 'more correct'): ?> (defun foo (a &key (b "Default")) (list a b)) FOO ?> (foo 1 2) Error: Incorrect keyword arguments For the most part it hasn't been an issue when I'm writing the code. But when I read code that does this stuff on the call side frequently (or isn't consistent in its use over time) it can be a little frustrating.