but my recent attempts to use Lambda have been a dismal failure, mostly because of subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) differences with Bind. For example, Lambda doesn't seem to support get_pointer to dereference through smart pointers.

Yeah, in the past I've had to bind the operator->() to the smart pointer argument and that looks plain ugly! Plus its not good for generic programming, you end up having to do some template magic to get it to call the right version, (native pointer * -> vs smart_ptr::operator->() )

I'm rather discouraged with how difficult it is to use standard algorithms -- or even algorithms over sequences as opposed to iterators -- to write something that could be coded quickly using dumb loops.

Yep, me too. That's why we wrote lambda in the first place. And that's why I'm promoting decltype and auto, and varidac templates, and why its imperative we figure out how to do anonymous functions.

I hold out some hope that the long-promised integration of Lambda and Phoenix will help to solve these problems, but it's hard to tell when (or if) that's actually coming.

That's the trouble with day jobs and mortgages vs free coding. Just not enough time in the day to do everything.

Glum in Somerville, Dave

Don't be glum soon you will be in Sunny Australia! Yours, -Gary-