This doesn't sound like a bad pattern to me. (Though I certainly think I have seen bad implementations of it.) But if the keys are known statically (as in the

This doesn't sound like a bad pattern to me. (Though I certainly think I have seen bad implementations of it.) But if the keys are known statically (as in the article), I think it's generally better to use named functions. But it's good to be aware of the capability, for cases like you're describing.