Securing a future for anonymous functions in Python

[BJörn Lindqvist]

The more features a language has, the harder it becomes to learn. An
example of that is C++ which has almost everything. Classes, structs,
templates, strange keywords that noone uses like auto, inline const,
passing by reference/value, enum, union, lots of macros, multiple
inheritance, namespaces etc. I'll bet that you could shave off 50% of
C++'s features and it would still be 95% as usable[*].

Judging by the number of PEP proposals and syntax additions that
appear on the mailing list every day Python could some day become as
bloated. We don't want that, do we? So how do we avoid feature bloat?:

1. We stop adding features, either now or at some point in the future.
2. We remove some features.

Either way we have to put a limit on the number of features we want
Python to have. Let's call that number X where X is a number much
smaller than infinity. With a set limit, the discussion becomes "which
features should be selected for use in Python?" instead of "should
this feature be added/removed?" Personally, I don't care either way if
lambda is removed or retained, but I would much rather have the "with"
keyword someone proposed, do-while loops or whatever. I think there
are way too many good features out there just waiting to take lambdas
place.

* - Please don't ask me to make that bet. 

-- 
mvh Björn