3 ms·

Loops are just implicit goto... The argument for maps and folds is the same as the argument for structured programming in general: using common/reusable idioms

• sidlls 10y ago
  Terseness doesn't necessarily bring clarity.
  • solidsnack9000 10y ago
    It's the recognizability, not the terseness, that brings clarity. Although Python's approach is not terse -- `fstyle = [f(x) for x in arr]` -- it is eminently recognizable. Your argument is not really about anything I specifically said; and without something to counterbalance, it argues against structured programming, too.
    • sidlls 10y ago
      How does it argue against structured programming? My argument is that "recognizability" is in the eye of the beholder. One programmer's "map is a powerful abstraction over transforms, for example loops" is another's "this is some cutesy code/math creole by a CS graduate who desperately wants to find nails to apply his functional programming and applied math hammer on". That's a fairly harsh way of saying that at some point the abstraction isn't clarifying, whether it's recognizable or not. Disclaimer: I'm a big fan of functional idioms (they're one of my favorite parts of Rust, for example). I'm not so much a big fan of absolutism or over-generalization.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]