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I agree, I think the most relevant arguments should be first and dilute out to less relevant arguments (eg. it’ll probably still work if you pass null or zero).

Then you can typically collate your useless short arguments on one line and you don’t get wierd formatting at the call sites, right?

And it's even impossible to do in some cases, e.g. default arguments in C++, which must be at the end of parameter list

It does make sense. I'll experiment with a combination of the two going forward (probably semantic first, lexicographical later)

Among other issues, it breaks down completely as soon as you have subclasses of any sort.

Design for readability – A primer on code typography