> I sorely miss it in Python, JS and other languages. They keep me guessing whether a function will mutate the parent structure, or a local copy in those languages!
Python at least is very clear about this ... everything, lists, class instances, dicts, tuples, strings, ints, floats ... are all passed by object reference. (Of course it's not relevant for tuples and scalars, which are immutable.)
Everything being passed by object reference just means every case is equally unclear.
Will frobnicate destroy foo or not?