A critic of Guido's blog on Python's lambda

[Alex Martelli]

Tomasz Zielonka <tomasz.zielonka at gmail.com> wrote:
   ...
> Also, having anonymous functions doesn't take your common sense away, so
> you still "have a chance".

I've seen many people (presumably coming from Lisp or Scheme) code
Python such as:

myname = lambda ...

rather than the obvious Python way to do it:

def myname(...

((they generally do that right before they start whining that their
absurd choice doesn't let them put statements inside the "unnamed
function that they need to assign to a name")).

_THAT_ is what having many semantically overlapping (or identically
equivalent) ways to perform the same task does to people: it takes the
common sense away from enough of them that I'm statistically certain to
have to wrestle with some of them (be it as suppliers, people I'm trying
to help out on mailing lists etc, students I'm mentoring -- at least
being at Google means I don't have to fear finding such people as my
colleagues, but the memories and the scars of when I was a freelance
consultant are still fresh, and my heart goes out to the 99% of sensible
Pythonistas who don't share my good luck).

As long as Guido planned to remove lambda altogether in Python 3.0, I
could console myself with the thought that this frequent, specific
idiocy wasn't one I would have to wrestle with forever; now I know I
will have no such luck -- it's back to the dark ages.  ((If I ever _DO_
find a language that *DOES* mercilessly refactor in pursuit of the ideal
"only one obvious way", I may well jump ship, since my faith in Python's
adherence to this principle which I cherish so intensely has been so
badly broken by GvR's recent decisions to keep lambdas, keep [<genexp>]
as an identical synonym for list(<genexp>), add {1,2,3} as an identical
synonym for set((1,2,3))...); though, being a greedy fellow, I'll
probably wait until all my Google options have vested;-)).


Alex