Interesting talk on Python vs. Ruby and how he would like Python to have just a bit more syntactic flexibility.

[Rhodri James]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:04:00 -0000, Jonathan Gardner  
<jgardner at jonathangardner.net> wrote:

> On Feb 17, 12:02 am, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <l... at geek-
> central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:
>> In message <60b1abce-4381-46ab-91ed-
>>
>> f2ab2154c... at g19g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>> > Also, lambda's are expressions, not statements ...
>>
>> Is such a distinction Pythonic, or not? For example, does Python  
>> distinguish
>> between functions and procedures?
>
> Not to the programmer, no. Callables are callable, no matter what they
> are, and they are all called the same way.
>
> (What the heck is a procedure, anyway? Is this different from a
> subroutine, a method, or a block?)

In classic Pascal, a procedure was distinct from a function in that it had  
no return value.  The concept doesn't really apply in Python; there are no  
procedures in that sense, since if a function terminates without supplying  
an explicit return value it returns None.

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeeste Herder to the Masses