Comment by ptarjan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ptarjan | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for the idea.

We used `params` because Method#parameters was what they called it in the standard library. I actually had it as `args` originally until someone pointed this out. https://ruby-doc.org/core-2.6.3/Method.html#method-i-paramet...

As for the syntax change, we are actually on our 8th iteration of the syntax. We really wanted this to NOT be a fork of Ruby so finding something compatible was very important. For example that's why it has the weird `sig {` syntax too, we didn't want to have to cause load-time and cyclic dependencies from adding type signatures.

> We used `params` because Method#parameters was what they called it in the standard library

Super interesting. We should probably have being consistent for naming parameters vs. arguments in stdlib. It's too late though!

On a super pedantic level, "parameters" are the names that you write in the function definition, and "arguments" are the values you pass as parameters.

  def name_length(person)

  steve = Person.new
  name_length(steve)

Here, 'person' is a parameter, and 'steve' is an argument.

Most programmers use them interchangeably.

We called those 2 terms "formal parameters", and "actual parameters" if I remember my programming language concepts class from college correctly.

I've never been to programming college but in 10 years I have always heard them as def(parameters) and call(arguments). Probably a lot of that was when reading about how VMs and compilers work, though.

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