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

[David]

On 11 October 2013 12:27, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Oct 2013 00:25:27 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote:
>
>> 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?
>
> Being simple souls and not Real Mathematicians, electrical engineers get
> confused by the similarity between I (current) and i (square root of -1),
> so they used j instead.
[...]
> <wink>

No, electrical engineers need many symbols for current for the same reason
that eskimos need many words for snow :) [*]

[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow