I've used Lisp extensively and I've used closures extensively. In Python you can simply define the function on the line above where you plan to use it. I really

I've used Lisp extensively and I've used closures extensively. In Python you can simply define the function on the line above where you plan to use it. I really don't see the need. Lisp needs lambda because you can't just randomly introduce new variables everywhere (you have to use flet, which actually is a lambda).