Talk:Petit Computer 3/@comment-15296152-20140630180028/@comment-9531161-20140630194013

I feel like the concept of pass by reference/value will be considered too difficult for people to comprehend or use correctly for a "simple" programming tool like Petit Computer. I think they'll either make everything pass by reference (which is probably the easiest to understand when coming from the original Petit Computer and all the global crap), or they'll make everything pass by value (which is better from a functional standpoint, but harder to understand for people who've only used global variables). I really don't think they would mix it, even though that would be great (just add a REF command, please!). If they go with pass by reference, it would be silly for them not to allow arrays to be passed (unless they're worried about unmatching size issues or memory issues in general). However, if they go with pass by value, I don't think they'd let you pass arrays, as that would get too confusing for new programmers.

As a final note, I'm pretty sure they're going to stick with pass by value and only simple data types as parameters (integers and strings), because it's easiest to implement and best suited for real functions. Not to mention that they've already stated you'd have local variables, so it would get even more confusing for new programmers if parameters were reference variables, but variables you declare locally are.... well, local.