From: Navindra Umanee <navindra@...>
Date: 2005-03-20T04:05:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Paul Graham recommends Ruby

Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Ruby blocks are just syntactic sugar for a special-case lambda.  Ruby
> 
> Care to elaborate?  What's lacking?

Yeah, sorry for being unclear.  I was referring to higher-order
functions i.e. Ruby blocks allow you to pass one anonymous lambda to a
higher-order function with convenient syntax...  for more than that it
gets less convenient.

> > doesn't support generic lambda half as cleanly, as say, Scheme.  What
> 
> You cannot do lambda{|x|x*2}(2), yes.

Yup, and for calling functions objects in general.

> Python's lambda was broken anyway (only one expression allowed) and
> the "closures" didn't seem to deserve that name from what I recall.
> Still, in some cases it can't be easily removed (e.g. GUI callbacks)
> without losing functionality.  But IANAP.

Agreed.  IANAP either.

> I don't care what methods Guido drops and whatnot.  After all, you
> still can write your own map, filter and reduce.  But when you drop
> lambdas and any way to closure (from what I have read, inner functions
> can't access outer variables), it's more than a dumb move IMO.

Again, I don't have that detailed knowledge about Python, but Guido says:

"also, there is a widespread misunderstanding that lambda can do
things that a nested function can't -- I still recall Laura
Creighton's Aha!-erlebnis after I showed her there was no difference!"

So, I presume he has his bases covered.

Cheers,
Navin.