On 19/06/2025 17:53, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
Speaking as a programmer of 60 years experience, lambdas give me the
willies - and I started with Jensen's Device in Algol60 when Algol60
was new.
Yes, lambdas are neat, but IMO they tend to be unreadable and
unmaintainable. If you like them, use them; but do not make them a
requirement, particularly for those who are not programmers.
Well, lambdas are an *essential* feature of Scheme and unavoidable if
you want to do deeper modifications in LilyPond. In other words, they
*are* a requirement in some circumstances and can't be avoided.
I do not dispute that lambdas are essential tools in Scheme. My point is
that while great for programmers, they are not things that Joe Public
should have to know about.
I still remember having to deal with Cobol programmers who could not
understand the notions of data types or of parameter passing. These, and
lambdas, are second nature to those of us who were trained oroore
sophisticated languages, but Lilypond is for musicians, not programmers.
the *public* interface has to be as simple as possible (but no simpler).
