Exactly. The author wasn't advising against using higher order functions in general, just certain ones like comp and partial, which are easily replaced by anon

Exactly. The author wasn't advising against using higher order functions in general, just certain ones like comp and partial, which are easily replaced by anonymous functions. I.e. (comp a b) is the same as #(a (b %)), so why not use the latter if it's easier to understand. I don't completely agree with the author on this point, but I know he wasn't against higher order functions.