[Tutor] Why lambda could be considered evil

[Scot W. Stevenson]

Hello Alan, 

> and I agree they are not immediaely intuitive. OTOH look
> at COBOL which takes natural language to the other extreme:
>
> X = X PLUS 1

Yes. Er. Well. I guess that explains why it is such a popular language, 
doesn't it...

> > I dimly remember having had calculus in school

> Different beast entirely.

Glad you said so. I was getting somewhat worried about not remembering a 
single thing about lambdas =8). 

> Python programmers learn to use
> indentation, doc strings, class browsers(dir (class))
> and other features that students ion other languages
> sometimes never really 'get'.

Hmm. Put that way, I have to agree with you, especially since I just worked 
thru two pages of generator examples and came away very impressed with 
what you can use them for. This just isn't BASIC anymore =8). 

One thing I have noticed with the "Cookbook" is how lambdas seem to be 
rather /non grata/, usually in their own paragraph and introduced by a 
phrase like "if you happen to like lambdas" or such. I have high hopes 
that it will become less and less common in the next years. In the end, 
truth and beauty will conquer all...

> If you ever get round to reading
> up on lambda calculus then great, you can use python
> to play games without having to learn Lisp or Haskell...

I think I'll save that one for a while - I still have the re module to get 
thru =8).

Thanks for the comments!
Y, Scot

-- 
 Scot W. Stevenson wrote me on Thursday, 29. Aug 2002 in Zepernick, Germany  
       on his happy little Linux system that has been up for 1726 hours       
        and has a CPU that is falling asleep at a system load of 0.03.