Python Tutorial Was: Guido's regrets: filter and map

[Matthew Knepley]

>>>>> ">" == Jeremy Fincher <tweedgeezer at hotmail.com> writes:

  >> Thomas Guettler <pan-newsreader at thomas-guettler.de> wrote in message
  >> news:<pan.2002.11.24.08.05.38.521605.727 at thomas-guettler.de>...  I never liked filter, map and reduce.
  >> 
  >> I think it would be good to remove them from the python tutorial.  I think the tutorial would be easier for newbies
  >> it it would be smaller.

  >> The biggest problem with filter, map, and reduce is that they're functions, not methods.  All this discussion about
  >> list comprehensions versus filter/map ignores one major disadvantage of list comprehensions: that they only work
  >> with lists.  If filter/map/reduce had been *methods* on list objects, then a programmer could implement his own
  >> container objects (binary trees, subclasses of list, etc.)  with their own filter/map/reduce methods to construct
  >> like containers, and people would be happier.
  Actually, wouldn't you expect (as in most functional languages) that these methods are
  polymorphic over the shape of the argument? I think that the functional paradigm is
  just unfamiliar to a great number of Python programmers. That is not a reason to jettison
  very useful functions from the language. Many systems have mixed programming paradigms, e.g.
  Mathematica.

        Matt

  >> As far as the tutorial goes, filter/map/reduce could be "discovered" just like the rest of the methods that aren't
  >> emphasized in the tutorial.

  >> Jeremy

-- 
"Failure has a thousand explanations. Success doesn't need one" -- Sir Alec Guiness