[Python-ideas] Syntactic sugar to declare partial functions

David Mertz mertz at gnosis.cx
Mon Aug 13 21:48:04 EDT 2018


Pedantically, Python's lambda isn't even the same thing as in the lambda
calculus. The mathematical abstraction is always curried, and neither
Python nor most languages that use the spelling 'lambda' do that.

So even assuming users must learn technical vocabulary, this is an
inaccurate such term. 'def' or 'func' would be less deceptive here for
anonymous functions.

The burden of learning the word lambda—and unlearning it's meaning in
mathematical logic if you happened to have used that—it's not huge. But
it's more than zero. And probably more than leaning 'function'.

On Mon, Aug 13, 2018, 8:49 PM Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz>
wrote:

> Chris Angelico wrote:
> > No, lambda calculus isn't on par with brakes - but anonymous functions
> > are, and if they're called "lambda", you just learn that.
>
> It's like saying that people would find it easier to learn to
> drive if "brakes" were called "stoppers" or something. I don't
> think that's true.
>
> --
> Greg
>
>
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