The Builder Design Pattern might help. Consider the following example
public class StudentBuilder
{
private String _name;
private int _age = 14; // this has a default
private String _motto = ""; // most students don't have one
public StudentBuilder() { }
public Student buildStudent()
{
return new Student(_name, _age, _motto);
}
public StudentBuilder name(String _name)
{
this._name = _name;
return this;
}
public StudentBuilder age(int _age)
{
this._age = _age;
return this;
}
public StudentBuilder motto(String _motto)
{
this._motto = _motto;
return this;
}
}
This lets us write code like
Student s1 = new StudentBuilder().name("Eli").buildStudent();
Student s2 = new StudentBuilder()
.name("Spicoli")
.age(16)
.motto("Aloha, Mr Hand")
.buildStudent();
If we leave off a required field (presumably name is required) then we can have the Student constructor throw an exception.
And it lets us have default/optional arguments without needing to keep track of any kind of argument order, since any order of those calls will work equally well.