[jerf]

I would further elaborate on your point by saying that as someone who likes to hang out on programming fora and help people as I was helped when I was young, this terminology confusion causes real confusion in the field as well.

Many programmers-in-training find it confusing as to why whether or not a function has a name seems to be tied to whether or not it has an environment (not that they phrase it that way but that's what it boils down to), and my usual answer is to explain something much like your post; the resolution is, there is no such connection. I have fielded this question in one form or another many times.

"Anonymous function" should not be used as a synonym for "closure". Generally I will follow along with the dominant language terminology if I am clearly in the context of a very particular language, but may include why I don't like the language community's terminology if it helps my point.

[DonaldPShimoda]

Oh absolutely, it's one of many such conflations that are common among the majority of real-world programmers. And you're right that a big part of the problem is poorly written (or sometimes just incorrect!) language documentation that doesn't go to the appropriate lengths to explain the distinctions in the terms.

Some other conflations I see frequently in the PL space:

- "argument" vs "parameter"

- "type coercion" vs "type casting"

- "static typing" vs "strong typing"

- "function" vs "method" (and we can throw in "procedure" and "subroutine")