The Importance of Terminology's Quality

[Dieter Maurer]

"xahlee at gmail.com" <xahlee at gmail.com> writes on Wed, 7 May 2008 16:13:36 -0700 (PDT):
> ...
> Let me give a few example.
> 
> • “lambda”, widely used as a keyword in functional languages, is named
> just “Function” in Mathematica. The “lambda” happend to be called so
> in the field of symbolic logic, is due to use of the greek letter
> lambda “λ” by happenstance. The word does not convey what it means.
> While, the name “Function”, stands for the mathematical concept of
> “function” as is.

"lambda" is not a function, but an operator with two operands, a variable
name and an expression resulting in another expression
which behaves like a function (the abstraction
of the variable name in the expression).


Dieter