> Sure, but it's not like that distinction is really important for the programmer. For most intends and purposes, he can just think of those as keyword identifiers

(I'll use lisp conventions, it's what I'm used to)

What you're saying is for coders, saying

    (doit x y :withFloat 5 :key "string")

has no important distinctions with

    [foo doit:x:y withFloat:5 key:"string"]

But keywords have defaults if they're missing. And furthermore you can have them in any order. So to implement the equivalent of the Lisp method above, I'd have to implement all of the following methods in Objective-C

    doit::withFloat:key:
    doit::key:withFloat:
    doit::withFloat:
    doit::key:
    doit::

That's just for two keywords. What happens when you have ten?