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

[Adam Jones]

Ken Tilton wrote:
> Alexander Schmolck wrote:
> > [trimmed groups]
> >
> > Ken Tilton <kentilton at gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >
> >>yes, but do not feel bad, everyone gets confused by the /analogy/ to
> >>spreadsheets into thinking Cells /is/ a spreadsheet. In fact, for a brief
> >>period I swore off the analogy because it was so invariably misunderstood.
> >>Even Graham misunderstood it.
> >
> >
> > Count me in.
>
> <g> But looking at what it says: "Think of the slots as cells in a
> spreadsheet (get it?), and you've got the right idea. ", if you follow
> the analogy (and know that slot means "data member" in other OO models)
> you also know that Serge's Spreadsheet example would have scored a big
> fat zero on the Miller Analogy Test. Serge in no way made slots in
> Python classes behave like cells in a spreadsheet. He simply started
> work on a Spreadsheet application, using Python classes along the way. Bzzt.
>
> While everyone makes the mistake, it is only because few of us (me
> included) read very carefully. Especially if they are more interested in
> flaming than learning what someone is saying.
>

I don't really mean any disrespect here, but if an analogy is not
interpreted correctly by a large group of people, the analogy is crap,
not the people. Yes, I understood it, specifically because I have spent
enough time dinking around with cell functions in a spreadhseet to
understand what you meant.

Maybe it would help to change the wording to "functions with cell
references in a spreadsheet" instead of "cells in a spreadsheet". Yes,
you lose the quippy phrasing but as it is most people use spreadsheets
as "simple database with informal ad hoc schema" and mostly ignore the
more powerful features anyways, so explicit language would probably
help the analogy. I'm guessing if you made some vague allusions to how
"sum(CellRange)" works in most spreadsheets people would get a better
idea of what is going on.