Fear and suspicion of lambdas, was Re: Meta decorator with parameters, defined in explicit functions

[Ben Bacarisse]

dieter <dieter at handshake.de> writes:
<snip>
>> Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
<snip>
>>> I don’t know why this fear and suspicion of lambdas is so widespread among
>>> Python users ... former Java/C# programmers, perhaps?

By replying I'm not accepting the premise -- I have no idea if there is
widespread fear and suspicion of lambdas among Python users but it seems
unlikely.

> Maybe, it's the name ("lambda").
>
> In Javascript, anonymous functions are widespread (and extensively
> used for e.g. callback definitions)

Yes, but in Python they are restricted to a single expression.  It's
therefore quite likely that programmers who want the semantics of an
anonymous function just define a named function and use that instead.
That saves you from having to decide, up front, if an expression is
going to be enough or from having to change it later if you find that it
isn't.

> - but it uses the much more familiar
> "function" (rather than "lambda") for this purpose.

... or the new arrow notation.

-- 
Ben.