Dancing with Functions – By Reference or By Value

As a programmer, it’s crucial to understand the difference between passing arguments by value or by reference—this is often a common interview question. Not only can this knowledge save hours when writing clean, error-free code, but it's also fundamental for debugging and optimizing.

While numerous resources (over a thousand!) explain these concepts, it’s worth noting that the behavior can differ between programming languages.

The Basics

When thinking about how memory works, remember this key idea: when passing arguments to a function, the distinction between by value and by reference determines whether a change made inside the function affects the original data or just a copy of the original data.

  • When a copy of the data is passed from the first function to another function, changes inside the second function don’t affect the original data.
  • If another function receives a reference (a pointer to the original data), then changes made to the data in one function will affect the original data and thus be visible in the other function as well.

A Quick Step-Back

What is a value in programming?
It’s a copy of the data.

What is a reference in programming?
It’s a pointer to the original data.

A Common Question

Are objects passed by value or by reference?

The answer often depends on the programming language and its specific implementation. Objects can be passed by reference in languages like JavaScript and Python, while in languages like C++, it depends on how they are defined.

Also, don’t forget to consider function literals and function expressions — understanding these will round out your comprehension of how functions handle arguments.

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