Hacker News Reader

"Anonymous function" is the term you're looking for. Lambdas are still encouraged for trivial functions; the only thing that's changed is that comprehensions have replaced many uses of map and filter. Python just requires you to name non-trivial functions.

IMHO, complex/nested anonymous functions are usually bad for maintainability, so I'd rather have a language that doesn't allow them (Python) than a community that overuses them (JavaScript).

I couldn't agree with you more. I think that Python's lack of complex anonymous functions actually forces the programmer to compose their code in a more efficient manner.

Python absolutely kills Javascript in the library department (particularly when it comes to doing stuff with tabular data). In my opinion the APIs for the built in data structures are also more intuitive and flexible. The __method__ protocols are also very elegant relative to what Javascript brings to the table. Of course, if you aren't doing anything fancy with data this point is partially moot.

I do admit that Javascript's object and array destructuring is extremely nice. The combination of destructuring and the spread operator makes working with heavily nested JSON much more enjoyable than in Python.

> Hm, actually, it's not. I'm surprised by this comment. I point out precisely the JavaScript features that weighed the most in my decision: "So with JavaScript you've got arrow functions, the method shorthand definition syntax, the spread operator, destructuring assignments, all functional Array methods and async functions. Combined with Vue's minimal patterns and Nuxt's conventions, I can't think of a better language to write web applications in."

I saw that. I guess I just expected you to go into detail about why you believe things like that are better. I use JS a lot in my day-to-day work for the front end of my web application. I also use Django and Python for my back-end. I'm well aware of the differences between Python and Javascript as they are the two languages I work with the most. I would not consider either language "better" than the other except at specific tasks. i.e. I can't really use python to build an SPA and it would be a pain to use Javascript for anything involving heavy number manipulation. I guess what I'm saying is that you should always choose the right tool for the job; sometimes that will Python and sometimes it will be JS. Other times, it might be something else. I'm always a little confused when someone decides that they're going to start writing everything in a particular language even when other languages are more suitable for the task.

> Exactly that, a "function body", "closure", "inline function", whatever you wanna call it. In Python there are lambdas, but they're limited and not even encouraged anymore. We're left with passing function references, and that's where JavaScript comes out the winner IMHO.

To each their own I guess. I feel like programmers these days automatically assume that more functional == more good. There are cases where using FP techniques is definitely advantageous. However, there are also circumstances where OOP is a better choice. I find that Python is equally capable of both paradigms. The idea of anonymous callbacks is good from a productivity standpoint, but readability suffers. Anonymous functions in general cause cryptic error messages and are difficult to debug. I've found that the over use of anonymous functions can also lead to a lot of duplicate code. There are many cases when an anonymous callback would be better if refactored into a named function. I believe that having more named functions aids in creating an efficient program compostion, even when using the FP paradigm. There is one use case where Javscript is much better suited than Python: web applications front ends. This comes as no surprise as JS was designed for exactly that purpose. Asynchronous callbacks and promises cannot be beat when dealing with fetching data from an API.