Securing a future for anonymous functions in Python
Steven Bethard
steven.bethard at gmail.com
Fri Jan 7 10:44:57 EST 2005
Alan Gauld wrote:
> On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 21:02:46 -0600, Doug Holton <a at b.c> wrote:
>
>>used, but there are people who do not like "lambda":
>>http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/view/419#comment-3069
>>The word "lambda" is meaningless to most people. Of course so is "def",
>>which might be why Guido van Robot changed it to "define":
>>http://gvr.sourceforge.net/screen_shots/
>
>
> The unfamiliar argument doesn't work for me. After all most
> people are unfamiliar with complex numbers (or imaginary) numbers
> but python still provides a complex number type. Just because the
> name is unfamiliar to some doesn't mean we shouldn't use the
> term if its the correct one for the concept.
I'm not sure this is really a fair comparison. What's the odds that if
you're unfamiliar with complex numbers that you're going to have to read
or write code that uses complex numbers? Probably pretty low. I don't
think I've ever had to read or write such code, and I *do* understand
complex numbers. Lambdas, on the other hand, show up in all kinds of
code, and even though I hardly ever use them myself, I have to
understand them because other people do (over-)use them.
Steve
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