DIP 1019--Named Arguments Lite--Final Review

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 9:32:03 AM MDT Olivier FAURE via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:
> On Saturday, 24 August 2019 at 16:36:51 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
>
> wrote:
> > On 8/23/19 6:23 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> >> I reiterate my previous opinion:
> >>
> >> https://digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/DIP_1019--Named_Argume
> >> nts_Lite--Community_Review_Round_2_327714.html#N327755>
> > We have two competing proposals for named arguments. Walter's
> > alternative has been consistently ignored, though I notice
> > Walter mentioned it more than once. That would be totally fine
> > if the proposals were better, but it doesn't take much to
> > figure Walter's is obviously way better, simpler, and
> > integrates beautifully within the existing language.
> >
> > This entire dynamics strikes me as massively counterproductive.
> > Why are we doing this?
>
> I kinda want to point out that neither you nor Walter have much
> ground to stand out when it comes to complaining about feedback
> being ignored.
>
> When Walter posted DIP-1021, I gave feedback with detailed
> examples in multiple occasions (in PR comments and the review
> thread), wrote a draft for a DIP that will propose an alternate
> implementation, and posted a type system discussion when I
> stalled on a problem. I have yet to see any acknowledgment of
> that work from Walter (atila gave some feedback, though it was
> fairly surface-level).
>
> I'm not saying I'm mad about that; but the way you're saying
> "Walter's proposal is obviously superior. Why didn't the author
> drop his DIP and make a new one based on Walter's idea instead?"
> seems a little naive of how the process tends to go.
>
> People usually don't give up on their own ideas to champion
> someone else's alternative. I don't, you probably don't, and
> Walter certainly doesn't.

A significant difference here is that Walter is one of the two people who
approves DIPs. So, ignoring his feedback when writing a DIP is likely to
mean that it's going to be rejected. That doesn't mean that he's right, and
the proposal could very well win him over if its argumentation is improved,
but ignoring what the person who's making the decision says is almost
certainly going to lead to the DIP being rejected. Given that Walter has
given his feedback on how he thinks named arguments should be done, I would
think that anyone writing a DIP on named arguments would need to address his
feedback in their DIP if they have any hope of it getting accepted.

Now, personally, I don't like the idea having named arguments in the
language, so it's fine with me if everyone writing DIPs on the matter does
so in a way that Walter is going to reject them, but given his position,
ignoring his feedback seems like a bad idea for anyone who wants their DIP
to be accepted.

- Jonathan M Davis