As others have pointed out, the best course for your goals (learning functional programming and using GAE) is probably going to be Clojure (or Scala). Python h

As others have pointed out, the best course for your goals (learning functional programming and using GAE) is probably going to be Clojure (or Scala). Python has taken some idioms from functional languages, but if you try to really code in the functional paradigm you will but heads with the language. Statements and expressions are very sharply divided. Lexical scoping is broken. Lambdas are one line only. Guido even suggested removing filter, reduce, lambda, and map from Python 3k[1]. If that isn't a signal that the functional paradigm won't be nurtured, I don't know what is. [1] http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=98196 http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=98196