From: Dave Bass <davebass@...>
Date: 2008-05-23T17:59:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Lambda Block vs. Method

I've been having conceptual problems with blocks and lambdas too. "I 
never used them in <my_first_language> so clearly they're unnecessary!" 
;-) I think it's a question of forcing oneself to think in a new and 
different way, which is always a difficult process.

Programming languages are mostly designed by people with a computer 
science background, so notions like lambda calculus, Lisp and functional 
programming are part of their toolkit. (Don't know what Matz's 
background is.) Ordinary folks who come to programming via engineering 
or science or other disciplines, or who started with Basic, don't have 
the same ways of thinking, so it can take some mental contortions to 
understand Ruby's constructs.

The problem for me is that I haven't seen any convincing examples where 
a Ruby block couldn't be replaced by another way of doing the same job. 
(Actually we're forced to use blocks instead of "for" loops, but so far 
I've been able to handle that by learning the syntax without really 
understanding what's going on underneath.)

Hopefully one day soon I'll see the light!
-- 
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