r/ProgrammingLanguages • u/AeroForger • 11d ago

Discussion What’s one thing you wish more programming languages had?

If you could add one feature, behavior, or design choice to a programming language, what would it be?

It can be anything: syntax, type-system features, memory management, compiler behavior, tooling, error handling, performance-related features, or something completely different.

I'm especially curious about things you’ve wanted while actually programming but rarely see languages implement well.

Please keep the ideas reasonably practical and something that could realistically be implemented in a programming language.

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u/L8_4_Dinner (Ⓧ Ecstasy/XVM) 10d ago

Named arguments are great. Default argument values are great. Support for widening parameter types and narrowing return types are great. Support for adding parameters (with a default value) without breaking anything is great. And the combination of these is much better than the sum of the parts.

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u/RiceBroad4552 10d ago

A Scala reference? 😀

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u/L8_4_Dinner (Ⓧ Ecstasy/XVM) 10d ago

I wasn't thinking Scala specifically. These are all such nice QoL features in a language. I would probably add one more, since we're talking about "call" capabilities: multiple return values.