title: How to translate a lambda expression into English?
body: <p>I'm a VB.NET programmer who also knows some C#. I've recently come across lambda expressions which <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb531253.aspx" rel="nofollow">in VB can look like this</a>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>a = Function() b + c
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397687.aspx" rel="nofollow">in C# they look like this</a>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>a =&gt; b + c;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>(Which, to me, looks a lot like a bizarre pointer expression from C)</p>
  
  <p>The problem is that when reading C# code I mentally parse the operators into english words. So <code>a = b + c;</code> becomes "add b and c and assign to a". However I have no mental translation in my built in parser for the for the <code>=&gt;</code> operator yet so <code>a =&gt; b + c;</code> becomes either "a equals pointer to b and c" which makes no sense or "a is a lambda of b and c" which is dreadful.</p>
  
  <p>I'm sure that the language creators meant for that operator to stand for a concept and that concept should be able to be reduced to a single word or very short phrase.</p>
  
  <p>So what is the intended English translation for the <code>=&gt;</code> operator?</p>
  
  <p>p.s. Note that I've tried to make the examples to be as simple as possible so as not to get bogged down in the specifics.</p>