this is almost a workaround for the lack of named parameters

[J]

On Saturday, 23 March 2013 at 19:56:17 UTC, deadalnix wrote:
> On Saturday, 23 March 2013 at 15:55:36 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
>> On Saturday, 23 March 2013 at 15:00:13 UTC, bearophile wrote:
>>> foobar:
>>>
>>>> Code that needs named parameters to be more readable is 
>>>> poorly designed code in the first place.
>>>
>>> Have you used a language where the usage of named arguments 
>>> is idiomatic, like Python, Scala or Ada? They are sometimes 
>>> useful even for well designed code, like functions with two 
>>> arguments.
>>>
>>> Bye,
>>> bearophile
>>
>> A simple example is matplotlib.pyplot.plot
>>
>> There are so many possible flags and parameters that can be 
>> passed in order to get the exact behaviour you want, but 
>> commonly you'll only want a few set for each call. You don't 
>> want to have to set all the other preceding parameters, you 
>> just want to go e.g. plot(data, linewidth=5)
>
> Can't the monadic style thing do the trick ?
>
> Named!plot.linewidth(5).call(data);
>
> This is doable with actual D using compile time reflection.

Good point, and I'm sure we all develop our personal sense of 
'code smell' based on our own past experience. I find adding lots 
of enums to be like doing RAII in C++: I find it a pain to have 
to pollute namespaces with extra enums (classes), just to get 
readability/safety.

To me, the builder/monadic style is clunky and harder to read. I 
find

plot(data, linewidth = 5)

to be clean, clear, and more concise.