Would Anonymous Functions Help in Learning Programming/Python?

[chris.monsanto at gmail.com]

On Sep 21, 6:07 pm, Cristian <super.sgt.pep... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sep 21, 2:48 pm, chris.monsa... at gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
> > There are already anonymous functions in Python.
>
> > lambda x, y, z: x + y + z
>
> > is the same as:
>
> > def _(x, y, z): return x + y + z
>
> > As for the method stuff, check out staticmethod(). If you assign
> > staticmethod(<function here>) to an object, it will be treated as a
> > normal function and not as a "method."
>
> > I have my own personal opinions about how methods should be in Python,
> > but, whatever. It's weird to deal with stuff like this:
>
> > x.y = re.match # Assign a function to an attribute of a class, but it
> > doesn't work because you can't assign anything but methods!
> > x.y = staticmethod(re.match) # Ugly
>
> True, there is lambda, but that is very limited. It might be useful
> for key arguments, but not much else. It doesn't solve the teaching
> problem of "See, functions are just like any other data type. You can
> assign it to a variable." It would be a footnote if it's mentioned at
> all. My hope is to subtly reinforce the notion that functions are data
> and can be passed around. The current function declaration doesn't
> help with this. Creating a function and assigning it to a name is
> exactly what Python does, why not have it come out in the syntax? It's
> not necessary, yes, but I think it would be helpful for teaching
> purposes.
>
> Again, it's not necessary as much as it's more intuitive and obvious
> what's going on. This helps a beginner sort out the process from the
> syntax without taking it on faith. They can see the class declaration
> and see "I'm defining just another attribute to this class only this
> time it happens to be method".
>
> There is nothing functionally lacking in Python. I'm just curious if
> there's anything Python can do syntax-wise to help a person better
> grasp programming ideas and Python's inner workings.

Guido apparently doesn't like lambda; I'm not really sure why, it's
extremely useful. There were rumors of it leaving in Python 3000, but
thankfully there was the decision to keep them. (I have a feeling if
they weren't kept in, a project fork would have happened or such.)
Anyway, one of the biggest problems implementation wise is indentation
in an expression - there is no expression currently that uses
significant whitespace. Python draws a pretty clear line between
expression and statement. I do agree with you however, it seems as if
there is an arbitrary line between function definitions and normal
variable assignment that shouldn't be there for the sake of
consistency.

A question: if you WERE to implement function definitions as normal
expressions, how would you go about embedding it within an expression?

x = map(def a:
            <line of code>
            <line of code>
            <line of code>
        , [1, 2, 3])

It looks hideous in my opinion and lining up the , with the def is
ugly. Not to mention currently, inside groupings, whitespace is
ignored. How would you handle a whitespace signif. expression inside a
grouping which by definition ignores whitespace?