Q: sort's key and cmp parameters

[kj]

In <7xtyyhikrl.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com> Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> writes:

>Python 2.x provides two ways
>and you can use whichever one fits the application better.  I have
>never understood why Python 3.x finds it necessary to break one of
>them.  Maybe I can migrate to Haskell by the time Python 2.x becomes
>deprecated.

!!!

Maybe Haskell is much handier than I give it credit for, but it's
hard for me to imagine that it is as convenient as Python 3, even
without the cmp sort option...  (And I agree with you that getting
rid of sort's cmp in Python 3 was a bad idea.)

What's going on here?  Our lab recently hired a new postdoc who,
to our disbelief, works almost exclusively in OCaml.  And I hear
all this talk about switching to Haskell or Scheme.  I don't get
it.  Despite the elegance of these languages, the libraries are
not there.  It seems to me it would take forever to get the simplest
things done in these languages...

Confused.

kj