zdennis wrote:
> 
> Here are some of my thoughts on the syntax "->(a=5,b=1){ }" to denote it 
> as ugly.
>  * -> is not a common construct in any language that I know of to 



Seems that creating an anonymous function has one of the most widely
varying syntaxes of all language features as can be seen by this table:

http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel/language-study/syntax-across-languages.html#FnctnnnmsFnct

Seems "->" appears in a few places (Perl6 looks very much like Ruby,
and -> appears as part of Haskell, OCaml and Erlang's syntaxes for
anonymous functions) so it's not totally unique, but only Perl6
puts the "->" at the beginning of the expression like the proposed
Ruby one.

> represent anonymous function declaration, while lambda is. Instead -> is 
> a recognized operator for dereferencing

I wouldn't say Lambda's that common.   For creating anonymous
functions variations of the word  "function" ("func", "fun", "fn",
"function", "create_function") seem to appear across more languages
than "lambda".  And if you're looking towards well-known languages,
C#'s "(a,b)=>" syntax is probably the winner.



There's so little commonality across languages that I think this will be
an objection no matter what syntax is used.



(For people who don't know that site already, this survey of syntax
across languages
  http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel/language-study/syntax-across-languages/
it's a very nice reference compare commonalities of various computer languages)