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Are there any disadvantages to having first class functions in a language?
Joel in this entry says
Object-oriented programming languages aren’t completely convinced that
you should be allowed to do anything with functions.
I might be naïve here, but why don’t all languages support first class functions if there aren’t much issues
In an ideal world where there was never a cost associated with developing new features, the only downside I can see to including functional programming techniques would be confusion to developers who are not familiar with functional techniques (and I don’t really see that as much of a downside).
In reality, treating functions as first-class typically requires significant rewrites to the compiler itself. The cost of doing this has to be weighed against the long-term gain.