Speaking of pedants, recent interview one guy (their 'senior scientist') spent the whole hour tossing pedantic nits at me. What about RESTful interfaces? Are they an API or not? Ha! They're not 'procedural'! Guess what this tiny recursive algorithm's parameters are for? I don't know, whatever you use them for. I would never use a recursive algorithm in embedded work (suicide). Ha! Ha! Its the identity value over the virtual function! Ooookay. Good for you. I'd convert it to tail recursion, then a simple iteration, and never need that value.

Needless to say I didn't connect.

I feel your pain man. They're a lot of insecure posers out there who would like to show you that they know more than you do. And often fail miserably at proving their point.

I bet nobody gets keys and values mixed up, even though it's basically exactly that distinction. Far from pedantic, in my view! If you don't know the difference I do think you'll have difficulty using the features effectively.

And if you do know the difference, which most will, it's worth knowing the standard terms. There's only two of them, and it won't take long to commit them to memory.

I've been coding for 20 years and never bothered to learn the difference. I assure you I can use methods and functions quite effectively.

Try to write an interpreter or compiler (for a language with functions of at least one argument). If you don't get the difference there, you will be in deep trouble.

Actually I'm working with Clang so that's when and why I wrote this article ;)

Good example. First I've seen, and it doesn't apply to me so I will continue using them as I have, but good example.

I bet you do know the difference - you just didn't know the words. And now you do!

I don't see how you could do any high-level programming without understanding the difference between defining a function and calling it.

I think you misunderstood collyw's original comment (or maybe I did?) - it's not pedantic to understand the conceptual difference, it's pedantic to worry about the terminology. (Except if you're writing a compiler, I guess, which most programmers are not.)

No, you misunderstand me (and the fault could be mine): my point is that since it's pedantic to worry about the terminology, you might as well use the standard terms. Leave it to others to waste their time worrying about what things are called.

pretty much

It doesn't matter if no one cares. It matters if 2 devs are talking and only one distinguished between these terms. In that case he has a chance of getting really confused qickly ;)

Or every single programming test you ever had in college. (Me)

Yes.

care to explain why then?