[davidhollander]

Anonymous Callbacks != Callbacks

Callbacks have been around forever in C using named functions, and are not specific to either the current generation of programming languages or programmers. One can still use a named function instead of a locally constructed lambda to represent a callback in a high level languages.

The primary difference is that when declaring named functions non-locally, one must explicitly share state through the parameter rather than implicitly sharing state through lexical scoping. It seems more accurate to label the problem of nesting lambdas to the point of ambiguity as "Lambda Abuse" or "Lexical Scoping Abuse" rather than "Callback Hell".

[haimez]

Not totally, the problem being described as "Callback Hell" is in my experience: non-locality of code. Things that relate to one another should be spatially together for a programmer to write, read, understand- and NOT split into success and error conditions around the axis of final callback.

Even with named functions, this is the problem- right? You pass in a named callback and you have to find that function later when you're debugging to figure out what's going on. Locality of code means no breaking context to find something not already on screen and therefore easier programming.