Le 11/01/2012 19:10, John J Barton a écrit : > The blog post > http://yehudakatz.com/2012/01/10/javascript-needs-blocks/ makes the > case for blocks that act like functions when passed as arguments but > have loop-up rules more like nested blocks. > > Of course these are called 'block lambdas', and I suggest that this is > a problem. Given that very few programmers understand lambda calculus > (and this will not change), the word 'lambda' is equivalent to "too > difficult to understand". > > When I looked up lambda on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda I read > > In mathematical logic > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_logic> and computer science > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science>, lambda is used to > introduce an anonymous function > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_function> expressed with the > concepts of lambda calculus > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus>. > > and then "Oh that is what they meant with all that 'block-lambda' stuff". > > If the discussion here were on a new ES feature "anonymous methods", > then I guess many more developers would be interested. If this feature > had the properties outlined in the blog post, then I think many > developers would understand the value of this potential feature. As it > is I guess they stop reading as soon as they see the word 'lambda'. >From your e-mail, it seems granted that "more developers interested" is a good thing. I can't really say whether I agree or not. So I guess I should ask the question: is more developers interested a good thing?
Language design and evolution of a language are not necessarily things that are of everyone interest. I think that those who are actually interested in the evolution of JavaScript read proposals and strawmen regardless of how scary the name may sound. If just the name of a proposal is enough to scare someone out, then this person may just not be interested in the evolution of the language... and that's perfectly fine. Besides naming, I think that the important thing is explaining what these names are about. Brendan Eich gave a presentation on proxies at JSConf.eu. Before that, who in the JS community was aware of what proxies are? Not a lot I would guess. This presentation helped explaining the idea and sharing some knowledge on what "reflection" is. In my opinion, this kind of sharing is more important than the fact that the feature is named "proxy" or "tartanpion". I did some of it when documenting WeakMaps on MDN [1]. The article you mention does this work too. There is no explanation on what a lambda is, but it does explain what JavaScript anonymous functions lack and how "block lambda" would be an improvement. As long as there are people doing this, names are not really important I think. Another part (which is not that widely accepted at least in western countries) is also that people acknowledge when they don't know something and either go read or ask questions. I think I have asked here my fair share of questions and I have always been answered appropriately. I've never been thrown rocks at, or made fun of. In my opinion, everyone staying open-minded seems more important than choosing nice-looking feature names. David [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/WeakMap
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