Does he really call it an "innovation"? It would be more precise to say that the lambda function is a essential concept in computer science. Lambda functions --

Does he really call it an "innovation"? It would be more precise to say that the lambda function is a essential concept in computer science. Lambda functions -- which is just another name for anonymous functions -- are a basic element of lambda calculus, which is one of the foundations of computer science (predating electronic computers). In more practical terms, you need lambdas to have closures, currying and higher-order functions in general. Without that you don't have Lisp, ML, Haskell, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_function