Something is rotten in Denmark...

[Jussi Piitulainen]

Alain Ketterlin writes:
> Gregory Ewing writes:
> 
> > Alain Ketterlin wrote:
> >> But going against generally accepted semantics should at least be
> >> clearly indicated. Lambda is one of the oldest computing
> >> abstraction, and they are at the core of any functional
> >> programming language.
> >
> > Yes, and Python's lambdas behave exactly the *same* way as every
> > other language's lambdas in this area. Changing it to do early
> > binding would be "going against generally accepted semantics".
> 
> You must be kidding. Like many others, you seem to think that Scheme is
> a typical functional language, which it is not. Learn about ML (i.e.,
> SML or CaML), Erlang, Haskell, etc. You can read, e.g.,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closure_%28computer_science%29

That seems a good read, but I don't see how it supports your
contention that Python goes against generally accepted semantics.

> The reason why we have the kind of lambdas we have in python (and
> scheme, and javascript, etc.) is just that it is way easier to
> implement. That's all I've said. And people have gotten used to it,
> without ever realizing they are using something completely different
> from what Church called the "lambda abstraction".

Church did not deal with assignment statements and order of execution.
Python has to.

> Whether the python/... concept of lambda is useful or not is another,
> subjective question, that I'm not intersted in. If you're pleased with
> it, go ahead.
> 
> (End of discussion for me.)

Oh well.