Received via email, this isn't a private discussion:
Nathan Rice nathan.alexander.r...@gmail.com wrote: I fail to see how the clunky act of importing a function most python users probably don't know exists then creating another new function is better than chaining one or two method calls.
If you consider importing functionality 'clunky', then we're already at an impasse over what we consider to be 'elegant'. I also don't believe that user ignorance of standard library features mandates the inclusion of _everything_ into the base langauge.
Just because you CAN do something already doesn't mean you can do it in an elegant way.
And just because YOU find it inelegant doesn't make it so. I find using operator & functools _far_ clearer in intent than using lambda, _and it works right now_, which was the point I was trying to make here. You wrote unreadable code and then tried to use that as an argument for your idea. Breaking down complex statements into clearer parts isn't a radical notion; cramming more and more functionality onto a single line isn't something to which Python needs to aspire.
If the only metric was "can we do this?" we would all still be using Fortran.
And if it's "I don't want to have to code to deal with this, let the language change to do it", you end up with PHP.