[Tutor] Are you allowed to shoot camels? [kinda OT]

[Alan Gauld]

> I'm with Jeff on this one - I've yet to see the light regarding
> lambda's. I understand they're used through-out Tkinter GUI stuff

They often are in practice although they are rarely (never)
necessary(*). But they are a convenient way of defining a one
liner function without the overhead of certing lots of defined
functions.

(*)Except that all function definitions are really lambdas,
they just don't use the keyword lambda anywhere....

> anyone put up an example of why a lambda is better? I would like to
> 'get' the concepts.

I gave a pseudo coe example in my reply to Jeff.
Also in my Functional Programming page there are some examples.

> Is this one of those conceptual things like OOP?

Yes, but its a bit more fundamental than OOP
Its about how programming languages are constructed
and function. Its like the theory behind how elictricity
flows in a circuit - you can change a fuse without knowing
that stuff but its more important if you have to design
the fuse!

Lambdas really start to work when you start building
new language constructs and the like.

> Or is it a subtlety that a Masters in COSC is necessary to
appreciate?

Certainly a Masters in CS should teach you about Lambdas
but you don't need that to appreciate them. They really
aren't that hard, its just the fancy Greek name puts folks
off I suspect :-)