On a side note, I just watched Crockford on Javascript and he said lambda functions are the greatest innovation in computer science. Could you point me toward a resource that will explain why?
Does he really call it an "innovation"? It would be more precise to say that the lambda function is a essential concept in computer science. Lambda functions -- which is just another name for anonymous functions -- are a basic element of lambda calculus, which is one of the foundations of computer science (predating electronic computers).
In more practical terms, you need lambdas to have closures, currying and higher-order functions in general. Without that you don't have Lisp, ML, Haskell, etc.
A lot of what that particular paper talks about is applicable to other languages that have lambda expressions in them.
Some of the examples in it does rely on lazy evaluation though. Laziness is usually encodable in most languages with lambdas. But most aren't lazy by default. Keep that in mind.
