Playing around with ruby's new keyword arguments to improve method clarity

kwrdfun.rb

 
 def extract(from_record:, attribute:)
   from_record[attribute]
 end
 
 def parse(path)
   get_data_from(path).map do |record|
     output_class.new(*attributes.map { |name| extract(attribute: name, from_record: record) })
   end
 end

posfun.rb

 def extract(record, attr)
   record[attr]
 end
 
 def convert(path)
   get_data_from(path).map do |record|
     output_class.new(*attributes.map { |attribute| extract(record, attribute) })
   end
 end

I was working on a programming puzzle yesterday and decided to try out ruby's new keyword arguments to see if I could improve the readability of my methods. It always bothers me when a method is so close to reading like a sentence and instantly being clear, but instead is garbled up by positional arguments. I'm not the biggest fan of the verbosity of ObjC in general, but I do really enjoy the readability of their methods with their interspersed arguments. While this is clearly not an equivalent of those, it is a way of achieving some of the same benefit.

I'm not sure if this has sold me on using keyword arguments going forward, but I would like to see the best places that I can apply it. The added benefit of not being order dependent could also stop silly quibbles over which order would be more readable for a given person.

• More readable method call
• No more Connascence of Position http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connascence_(computer_programming)#Connascence_of_Position_.28CoP.29
• Readable keywords might not make sense in the method itself
• Added Connascene of Name, but its kind of hard to avoid that one