map/filter/reduce/lambda opinions and background unscientific mini-survey

Chris Smith smitty_one_each at bigfoot.com
Fri Jul 1 18:13:08 EDT 2005


>>>>> "Devan" == Devan L <devlai at gmail.com> writes:

    Devan> None of them are really indispensible. Map and filter cab
    Devan> be replaced with list comprehensions. reduce is redundant
    Devan> except when multiplying a series; there's a sum function
    Devan> for a reason. Lambda looks cleaner in some cases, but you
    Devan> don't gain any functionality.

    Devan> What really struck me, though, is the last line of the
    Devan> abstract:

    Devan> "I expect tons of disagreement in the feedback, all from
    Devan> ex-Lisp-or-Scheme folks. :-)"

    Devan> Guido wrote somewhere that the original map, filter, and
    Devan> reduce came from a lisp hacker who missed them.

My question is, why not move them into, say, a "functional" library,
so that legacy code can be handled via an import, and those heads
preferring to think that way can be satisfied, and those little corner
cases not handled by the newer, sweller syntaxes can still be managed?
IOW, just ripping them out of the core and leaving everyone in the
lurch doesn't seem too pythonic to me.
Best,
Chris 



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