Aside: Labeled arguments

Before we go further with the tutorial, it's worth noting that Dada supports labeled arguments. That means that instead of writing Point(22, 44) one can also give labels to each argument, like Point(x: 22, y: 44):

Try changing the code above to give the parameters in a different order, such as Point(y: 44, x: 22) -- you will see that the output doesn't change.

Adding labels can help make it clearer what is going on. The rules are as follows:

You must also give the arguments in the order in which they were declared in the function, whether or not labels were provided.
Once you give a label to a parameter, you must give a label to all the remaining parameters (so you can't do Point(x: 22, yy) but you can do Point(22, y: 44).

Dada will also sometimes suggest you use labels if it thinks you might be making a mistake. For example, try this:

See the squiggly line? That is Dada telling us that we may have reversed the order of end and start. We can disable this warning by giving explicit labels to the arguments, making it clear that we meant to switch the order: