Functional Programming in Python

For many FP programmers, the lambdas are not nearly magic enough.

In Swift, you can do something like this :

    reversedNames = names.sorted(by: { $0 > $1 } )

So you see the position Python is in: it has to balance a bit of magic for the power user, and yet not too much for the casual user.

It's a very delicate exercice, and it receives a lot of critics for it.

An F# or Lisp dev comming to Python will complain that it's not expressive enough.

A geographer comming to Python will struggle reading advanced code.

Yet we have to catters to all of them, give the huge Python popularity and it's goal to be "the second best language for everything".

I think Guido did a very decent job at it, although he gets a lot of heat for it. People don't like to hear "no" when they ask for a poney.

And the lambda expression is one of the most controversial decisions. Beginners have a hard time with it, but professional coders may snap when they hear it's limited to one line.

It overloads map() with a lambda function, to compose function pipelining.

Then, it introduces flow() as the new pipelining tool. But you have to use bind() on the last function call to return the value.

Interesting concepts, but unless Python incorporates this as a standard feature, then this will remain a fringe idea. And it will add significant load to the development and maintenance process of Python programs.

Admittedly, I like Elixir’s pipe forward concept |>

That makes it super simple to do functional composition, and it will automatically bind and return the last value.

Then getting the user profile, can be like so:

     user_profile = 
          userid |> get_request |> parse_json

The answer is simple: let the `DivsionByZero` exception raise! You don't have to return anything!

Better yet, you should have input cleansing/data validation before it gets to that point. The alternative presented in the blog post is absurd over-engineering.