A critic of Guido's blog on Python's lambda

[Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk]

Followup-To: comp.lang.lisp

Bill Atkins <NOatkinwSPAM at rpi.edu> writes:

> The cool thing about ITERATE is that it lets you express looping
> concepts in a language designed explicitly for such a purpose, e.g.
>
>   (iter (for x in '(1 3 3))
>         (summing x))  => 7
>
>   (iter (for x in '(1 -3 2))
>         (finding x maximizing (abs x))) => -3
>
>   (iter (for x in '(a b c 1 d 3 e))
>         (when (symbolp x)
>           (collect x)))  => (a b c d e)

While such macros indeed allow to generate efficient code, I don't
find these examples convincing in terms of readability. The same
examples in my language where iteration is based on higher order
functions are shorter and also clear:

Sum [1 3 3]
=> 7

[1 (-3) 2]->MaximumBy Abs
=> -3

[#a #b #c 1 #d 3 #e]->Select (_ %Is SYMBOL)
=> [#a #b #c #d #e]

-- 
   __("<         Marcin Kowalczyk
   \__/       qrczak at knm.org.pl
    ^^     http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/