Re: Prototypes (was Re: kickoff)

[Jonathan Bachrach <jrb@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> On 18 Apr 2002, Eric Kidd wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 2002-04-16 at 18:43, Avi Bryant wrote:
> > > Another wish I'd very much like to see fullfilled is keyword arguments.
> > 
> > This is pretty vital. :-)
> 
> My language (see .sig) allows all arguments to be specified either 
> positionally or by keyword. Any argument can be a keyword argument.
> Why must there be a distinction?

we have a proposal for keywords and overloading:

   www.googoogaga.edu/wiki/index.php?KeywordProposal

which we should be implementing in the near future.  the general idea
(like in supercollider and python) is to make parameter naming
orthogonal to specialization and parameter defaulting orthogonal to
naming.  the first goal hairs up generic function dispatch and without
some dynamic compilation support incurs a pretty good runtime cost, so
i decided to hold off for the initial release.

jonathan