Let's Talk About Lambda Functions!

[Robert Hanlin]

"Donn Cave" <donn at drizzle.com> wrote:
> Do you think functional programming is harmed by Python's lambda?
> It's only a somewhat awkward notation for an anonymous function!
> If FP is taking some kind of beating over it, it's the first I've
> heard.  

Well, Python is a popular choice of newer programmers and those tired
of verbose C-like languages.  So they look at usenet flames saying
that Guido never really liked functional programming, and it brought
this ugly cankersore unto Python... at the very least, this fosters a
distrust of functional programming.  And add to this that some people
initially find the word "lambda" intimidating.  Even though the name
is just an accident of history.


> heard.  It would be like dreading Python because one's introduction
> to Haskell made imperative constructs seem difficult.  

I sure as hell dread writing Java directly, without help from tools
written in Jython or Python to generate Java code. ;-)


Robert