4 ms·

I regularly read cutting edge research papers whose code examples are expressed in lambda calculus, a language from the 1930s with 3 syntax rules and 1 reductio

• visarga 6y ago
  Not a powerful argument because in 90 years it's still not mainstream and only exists in papers and blog posts. On the other hand pattern matching is widely used. 'Simple' can be 'complicated' in another way, otherwise we'd prefer to write machine code.
  • chriswarbo 6y ago
    > Not a powerful argument because in 90 years it's still not mainstream and only exists in papers and blog posts https://docs.python.org/3/reference/expressions.html#lambda https://docs.python.org/3/reference/expressions.html#lambda https://262.ecma-international.org/11.0/#sec-arrow-function-definitions https://262.ecma-international.org/11.0/#sec-arrow-function-... https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se15/html/jls-15.html#jls-15.27 https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se15/html/jls-15.ht... https://timsong-cpp.github.io/cppwp/n3337/expr.prim.lambda https://timsong-cpp.github.io/cppwp/n3337/expr.prim.lambda https://rosettacode.org/wiki/First-class_functions https://rosettacode.org/wiki/First-class_functions