[AF]

People continue to bring this post up. It is 2 years old, and Guido has said he will not be dropping functional constructs in Python.

And the reason he wanted to remove them is not because he wants to 'dumb down' the language, but rather because list comprehensions do what filter/map/reduce can do 9 times out of 10 but end up a lot more legible. He says as much in that post. But again, if you really want those functions, they still exist in Python and will exist in the future.

[michaelneale]

I was under the impression (from documentation, not from experience) that map/filter were the more "optimal" way to do things when you had a choice. I certainly find them more intuitive then the alternatives.

Another feature is the nested defines - that is quite nice (considering that you can put very little into a lambda).