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

[Tomasz Zielonka]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> ``An unneeded feature "cannot" be added (elegantly) in future releases
> of the language'' is just as trivial and acceptable for the unneded
> feature ``allow ( as an ordinary single-character identifier'' as for
> the unneded feature ``allow unnamed functions with all the flexibility
> of named ones''.

You can't be seriously claiming that these two features are equally
(un)needed. Anonymous functions come from the foundations of computer
science - Lamda Calculus. They are just a natural step on the road to
higher level languages. There are useful programming techniques, like
monadic programming, that are infeasible without anonymous functions.
Anonymous functions really add some power to the language.

On the other hand, what do you get by allowing ( as an indentifier?

Significant whitespace is a good thing, but the way it is designed in
Python it has some costs. Can't you simply acknowledge that?

Best regards
Tomasz