I'm the one who missed something: each of my examples called its functions with no arguments. Your approach would, of course work when the functions are called

I'm the one who missed something: each of my examples called its functions with no arguments. Your approach would, of course work when the functions are called with no arguments or the same arguments. (first-working (get-it-from-the-cache (or local-cache default-cache)) (get-it-from-the-database current-database-connection) (get-it-from-an-external-api (ask-user-for-api-credentials)) (compute-it-the-slow-way foo bar baz) default-value) Each expression can be arbitrary code where to do something similar in Python you'd need to compute a thunk in advance. There's also an advantage in clarity because an abstraction can be defined. Once you know what first-working is for, the purpose of this block of code is clear as soon as you read the first token. Using a pattern instead of an abstraction, it's necessary to read the whole loop to make sure it's really the pattern you think it is.