[berkay]

"Like lambdas, it can be a complicated concept to learn, but once you unlock this in you code, you write less code and accomplish more"

With the caveat that anyone who may be maintaining/using/enhancing your code will also need to be able to "unlock" this. Keeping the language simpler has benefits beyond the initial code development.

[snaky]

> lambdas, it can be a complicated concept to learn

I'm curious, when was that being said? (Perl 5 was released in 1994, JavaScript 1.2 in 1997)

[Ericson2314]

Or, you know, we could actually learn something in accordance with the nice pay most of us get.

[groovy2shoes]

This is one of my biggest frustrations when these sorts of discussions come up. It seems a great many programmers -- amateurs, students, and even professionals -- resist learning anything new.

As programmers, we deal primarily in abstractions. Our programming languages offer formal tools for creating and manipulating abstractions. In my view, any language that offers more tools for abstractions is better than another language that offers fewer such tools. As a professional whose primary job is to deal with abstractions, any new kind of abstraction is of interest. All programmers should be not only willing to be constantly learning new techniques and new abstractions, but we should be eager to learn and apply these things. Bigger toolbox => better quality of life w.r.t. work.

Even at my day job, I've heard things like "that's too computer sciency for mere mortals". I'm sorry, are we not computer scientists? Are we in the habit of employing people who are not professional programmers to write our software? And to think I'm the only developer in the office without a master's degree, as if they all decided that once they graduated they were finished learning...

Heaven forbid you should have to learn something! To educate yourself! To grow in terms of knowledge and skill! Do we have "development goals" every year for no reason at all?

As if spending an hour or two learning something would kill you!

AAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!