map/filter/reduce/lambda opinions and background unscientific mini-survey

[Erik Max Francis]

Ron Adam wrote:

> So you are saying that anything that has a 1% use case should be 
> included as a builtin function?
> 
> I think I can find a few hundred other functions in the library that are 
> used more than ten times as often as reduce.  Should those be builtins too?
> 
> This is a practical over purity issue, so what are the practical reasons 
> for keeping it.  "It's already there" isn't a practical reason.  And it 
> covers 100% of it's own potential use cases, is circular logic without a 
> real underlying basis.

But the Python 3000 plan, at least what we've heard of it so far, isn't 
to move it to a standard library module.  It's to remove it altogether, 
replacing it with sum and product.  Since sum and product don't cover 
all the uses cases for reduce, this is a case of taking one function 
that handles all the required use cases and replacing it with _two_ 
functions that don't.  Since it's doubling the footprint of the reduce 
functionality, arguments about avoiding pollution are red herrings.

-- 
Erik Max Francis && max at alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM erikmaxfrancis
   Every astronaut who goes up knows the risks he or she faces.
   -- Sally Ride