[Groxx]

I dunno, ruby has some nice tendencies here, like `out = [1,2,3].map(&:to_s)` which is small and descriptive[1].

Compare that to:

    out = []
    [1,2,3].each do |x|
      out.append(x.to_s)
    end

IMO that's not fad material - that's progress. Maps and folds can totally be abused to produce inscrutable nonsense, but for small, common operations they're often much more obviously-correct.

[1]: `&:method_name` is extremely-common shorthand for "call this method"

[XorNot]

I had no idea what you were trying to do in the first paragraph whereas without knowing much ruby I can easily read the intent of the second.

[sheepmullet]

That has more to do with familiarity than anything else.

A tale of two cities is an easier book for an English speaker than Les Aventures de Tintin.

Map applies a function to each item in a collection.

As pseudo-code:

Collection.map(function)

And in the parents example we have:

[1,2,3].map(&:to_s)

The only Ruby specific part is &:.