What is a lambda (function)?

Question

For a person without a comp-sci background, what is a lambda in the world of Computer Science?

Answer 1

A lambda function is another way of saying anonymous function, which just means it's not assigned to a name/identifier.

Like, you could make a section of code

```

x=3

y=5

z=x+y

```

But you can simplify it with "anonymous variables" by just writing `z=3+5`.

In the same vein, you can make a function without naming it. So you can simplify the code

```

z=add(5,6)

function add(x, y)

return x+y

```

to just

```

f=lambda: (x, y) => x+y

z=f(5, 6)

```