addendum: reduce() in fact embodies a form of iteration/recursion on lists, very suitable in a functional language environment. If Python's lambda and other functional facilities are more powerful, reduce() would be a good addition. For instance, in functional programing, it is a paradigm to nest or sequence functions. (most readers will be familiar in the form of unix shell's “pipe”). When you sequence functions, you can't stop in the middle and do a loop construct. So, reduce() and other functional forms of iteration are convenient and necessary.
---------- For version with slight professionalism (sans “fuck”), see: http://xahlee.org/perl-python/python_3000.html Note: Guido certainly isn't a moron. But, this post of his shows his haughtiness, and rather unfamiliarity with functional programing. (i.e. has he, worked in a functional language in any significant length or project?) However, he's got the audacity to assert things, probably due to bigshot status. Guido's stumble isn't a rare instance in the industry, and i don't take him to be of any sinister nature. (i don't know much about Guido the person or personality.) There are quite a lot fucking liers and charlatans in the computing industry, especially the OpenSourcers, from the fucking a-dime-a-million students with their “FREE” irresponsible homeworks on the net to fuckheads like James Gosling of Java , Larry Wall of Perl, Linus Torvolts of Linux kernel, and that fuckhead C++ Berjo something, the unix advocating fuckers, and those “gang of four” Design Patterns shit and the criminals of eXtreme Programing and UML... with these pundits begets one generation of fucking tech geeking coding monkeys, thinking that they know something, while creating a mass of garbage that crashes and fucks us up everyday in the computing world. (disclaimer: this post is pure opinion.) "The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don't master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus." —Edsger Dijkstra 1930-2002. Xah [EMAIL PROTECTED] ∑ http://xahlee.org/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
