[Python-Dev] linear algebra

[Paul Prescod]

Greg Wilson wrote:
> 
> .... Saying, "But you don't have to use these new operators if
> you don't want to," is a red herring --- if I want to understand/modify
> other people's code, I'll have to learn 'em (just as I've had to learn
> most of Perl's syntax, one painful special case at a time, in order to use
> the LDAP, XML, CGI, and imaging libraries).
> 
> So: I would like this (linear algebra, min/max, other notation) to happen,
> but only if there's an extensible, scalable framework for user-defined
> libraries to add operators to Python, in the same way that they can now
> add new classes.  

I don't want to come to someone else's code and have to learn a bunch of
operators that they invented, for the same reason that you don't want to
learn all of Perl's built-in special cases.

I would support a framework to compile and load well-defined,
independent, Python-based languages (PyMatrix, XSLPy) onto a shared
Python virtual machine. OTOH, I would freak out if I loaded a module
that proported to be Python and found it had a bunch of operators not
defined in the Python specification. I'll leave that experiment to REBOL
and see what happens.
-- 
 Paul Prescod - Not encumbered by corporate consensus
It's difficult to extract sense from strings, but they're the only
communication coin we can count on. 
	- http://www.cs.yale.edu/~perlis-alan/quotes.html