map/filter/reduce/lambda opinions and background unscientificmini-survey

[Ivan Van Laningham]

Hi All--

Tom Anderson wrote:
> 
> Comrades,
> 
> "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.  In fact, even though I've done
more than my fair share of lambda Tkinter programming using lambdas,
I've never been happy with lambda.  And I've spent months inside of
Lisp/Emacs Lisp/Scheme, too (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;-).  I find list comprehensions easier to understand than
map, and small named functions or, better yet, class methods, *tons*
easier to read/understand than lambda--there are too many restrictions
you have to remember.

Personally, I find that Lisp & its derivatives put your head in a very
weird place.  Even weirder than PostScript/Forth/RPN, when you come
right down to it.

I won't miss them, but since I don't use them now, that doesn't mean a
whole lot.

Metta,
Ivan
----------------------------------------------
Ivan Van Laningham
God N Locomotive Works
http://www.andi-holmes.com/
http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html
Army Signal Corps:  Cu Chi, Class of '70
Author:  Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours