[JohnBooty]

That sounds like some malpractice.

Ruby has had keyword arguments since Ruby 2.0 from 2008 and earlier code could certainly use option hashes.

So I don't see a reason for any confusion there.

    # probably malpractice in a system where many methods
    # take IDs and some take Users
    def do_something_with_user(user)
    end

    # how hard is this? trivially easy and unambiguous.
    def do_something_with_user(user_id:)
    end

In the second example, you would really have to be asleep at the wheel to make a mistake like:

    # this is obviously wrong
    do_something_with_user(user_id: User.first)

I don't see the problem. It would be nice if a compiler/IDE could catch that, but on the other hand, it just looks blatantly wrong as you type it and will certainly blow up the first time you call it.