How would shallow generators compose with lambda?

[Brendan Eich]

On May 28, 2009, at 11:48 AM, Jim Blandy wrote:

> This is just a desugaring of some nested lets, but we still have  
> yield capturing many frames.  If this doesn't work, lambda is really  
> useless.

Dave replied, but I wanted to join in agreeing on the following:


> For what it's worth, speaking as a long-time Scheme fan, I wouldn't  
> add lambda to ES.  It seems too similar to function; there will be  
> endless blog posts explaining the differences and motivation, mostly  
> slightly wrong.  The best ones will say, "Don't use it; just use  
> function."  And lambda introduces an awful lot of subtlety for  
> something whose main claim to utility would be in allowing precise  
> and clear definitions of new control constructs through desugaring.   
> Natural language is bad, but not this bad.

I'm "cool" toward lambda, meaning not in favor. I'd rather reform  
function to the extent that doing so helps programmers. I'm not  
convinced that TCP matters a lot to those humans. To some programmers,  
and of course for macros and other things involving code generation  
and analysis, lambdas are great. But you can't please every(one|thing).

/be