JuliaLang/julia — comment on commit 08bd95624f10e4dfb720f6ef88eb3ec564789528
File:  line 0
By JeffBezanson:

I should clarify that there's nothing wrong with having an `add(s, xs...)` method, as long as the purpose of it is to allow calls like `add(s, x, y)` and `add(s, x, y, z, w)`. In those kinds of cases, we will be able to avoid any extra copying or heap-allocating. The problem is calling it with `add(s, X...)` where `X` might be some huge data structure. The judgment call is which of these cases is important, and how great is the temptation to write the dangerous splice. Generally I prefer to avoid varargs functions wherever possible, and their only real purpose is so you can write `rand(n,m)` instead of `rand((n,m))`.