Complex literals (was Re: I am never going to complain about Python again)

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 12:09 AM, Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> wrote:
> BTW, one of the earliest things that turned me on to Python was when I
> discovered that it uses j as the imaginary unit, not i.  All
> right-thinking people will agree with me on this.

I've never been well-up on complex numbers; can you elaborate on this,
please? All I know is that I was taught that the square root of -1 is
called i, and that hypercomplex numbers include i, j, k, and maybe
even other terms, and I never understood where j comes from. Why is
Python better for using j?

ChrisA