f(x,y) -> Clear and straightforward - the mark of practical programming. f x y -> Acceptable in shell scripting, but a bit odd. (f x y) -> Impossibly puzzling. Approach with caution!

Pretty funny. I'm working with maven at the moment so a function call looks more like :

<plugins> <plugin>execute</plugin> <id>function-f</id> <executions> <execution> <cmd>f</cmd> <arguments> <argument>x</argument> <argument>y</argument> </arguments> </execution> </executions> </plugin>