Re: named-lambda, etc

[JMILLER@MIT-OZ]

I vowed never to send a message to this forum, but Will finally
got me.  I have been teaching Scheme out of S&ICP for 3 years now
and find that introducing NAMED-LAMBDA simultaneously with LAMBDA
in fact makes most people feel far more comfortable.  I introduce
it by explaining that it is sometimes nice for a procedure to
have "a name for itself" as opposed to "a name other things call
it" and use the analogy of nicknames.  Most students sigh a large
sigh of relief at this point, since it seems that it fulfills
some need they have for procedures to have names -- I don't know
why they are so firmly convinced that a nameless procedure is
execrable, but it is so!  This is not an argument either way
about REC, etc.  -- although the notion of a set of names for
each other shared by a group is just a tad harder to explain.

--Jim