Does Python really follow its philosophy of "Readability counts"?

[Mark Wooding]

Bruno Desthuilliers <bruno.42.desthuilliers at websiteburo.invalid> writes:

> Paul Rubin a écrit :
>> I'd say that Python's FP characteristics are an important part of its
>> expressiveness.
>
> Indeed - but they do not make Python a functional language[1]. Python is
> based on objects, not on functions, 

I'd have a good go at defining a functional language as one which treats
functions as first-class objects -- i.e., can be passed as arguments,
returned as results, stored in data structures, etc.  In that regard,
Python is a proper paid-up functional programming language.  It's not a
/pure/ language -- i.e., there are side effects -- but ML has those too
and it's widely considered functional; and it's not lazily evaluated --
but again neither is ML.

-- [mdw]