It's not nearly as ingrained into the language as Scala. Python's functional tools are rather basic. My understanding is that Guido believed that adding too much functional style to Python risked making the language muddled, exactly as we're discussing. A prime guideline for the language has always been (from the Zen of Python):
> There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
has some notes on the history of functional tools in Python, though not much reasoning.
> Curiously, the map, filter, and reduce functions that originally motivated the introduction of lambda and other functional features have to a large extent been superseded by list comprehensions and generator expressions.
> There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
http://fold.sigusr2.net/2010/03/guido-on-functional.html
http://python-history.blogspot.com/2009/04/origins-of-python...
has some notes on the history of functional tools in Python, though not much reasoning.
> Curiously, the map, filter, and reduce functions that originally motivated the introduction of lambda and other functional features have to a large extent been superseded by list comprehensions and generator expressions.