Re:Stop writing lambda expressions in Python
by pdonis on Thursday September 27, 2018 @05:27PM
(#18088875)
Thanks for the link. The paragraph you quote makes me think he is comparing Python's lambda to Scheme's equivalent, which of course will make Python's lambda seem broken. IIRC the course was taught in Scheme at one time, but it switched to Python because it seemed easier for students to grasp the basics that way.
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Re:Stop writing lambda expressions in Python
by nikofeyn on Thursday September 27, 2018 @06:29PM
(#18089395)
> IIRC the course was taught in Scheme at one time, but it switched to Python because it seemed easier for students to grasp the basics that way.
as explained in the interview, the course changed to python because the course itself changed. they basically killed off the old course and created new courses built around their new degree program structure. the new course hits a lot of different aspects of electrical, computer, and software engineering, many of which heavily use existing libraries, so they seemed to pick python for this.
in my opinion, they could have easily written libraries in another language, so i suspect there were some politics at MIT that lead to the decision to use python.
Re:Stop writing lambda expressions in Python
by dreamcompiler on Thursday September 27, 2018 @05:54PM
(#18089131)
It's not just Scheme; in Common Lisp and Haskell and every other language that supports lambda, lambda is a first-class construct that is used all the time. Python's lambda feels like a war veteran that had its legs blown off. Best policy is probably just to pretend it's not in the language.