map/filter/reduce/lambda opinions and background

[François Pinard]

[Ivan Van Laningham]
> [Tom Anderson]
> > [Guido]

> > "I expect tons of disagreement in the feedback, all from ex-Lisp-or-Scheme
> > folks. :-)"

> > I disagree strongly with Guido's proposals, and i am not an ex-Lisp,
> > -Scheme or -any-other-functional-language programmer; my only other
> > real language is Java. I wonder if i'm an outlier.

> > So, if you're a pythonista who loves map and lambda, and disagrees
> > with Guido, what's your background? Functional or not?

> I'm a pythonista who doesn't love them.

Same here. `lambda' could go away.  Yet `map' is sometimes useful...

> And I've spent months inside of Lisp/Emacs Lisp/Scheme [...]

I worked on Lisp / Scheme / Emacs-Lisp for many dozens of years.
Moreover, a few times for unusual machines, I implemented Lisps.

> (I have the world's second largest .emacs file [my friend Andy Glew
> has the largest], even though I can't use it on Windows;-).

You are a shameless lier! :-) It just _cannot_ beat the size of mine, at
least not so long ago when I still was an Emacs user.  And despite its
size, my .emacs worked on a lot of systems, Windows included.

> Personally, I find that Lisp & its derivatives put your head in a very
> weird place.

Lisp / Scheme are very OK!  Usable for a wide range of applications,
including system' -- with the proper choices, they can be fairly speedy
as well.  Yet, for ubiquitous and day-to-day work, Python is nicer! :-)

-- 
François Pinard   http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca