Matlab vs Python (was RE: Discussion: Introducing new operators for matrix computation)

[Thomas Wouters]

On Tue, Jul 18, 2000 at 08:09:12AM -0500, John Lull wrote:
> At the dawn of the third millenium (by the common reckoning), Paul
> Prescod <paul at prescod.net> wrote (with possible deletions):

> > Look, if you took a poll of all programmers in the world, only a small
> > fraction use matrices very often. Therefore it is a niche. Most
> > programmers use numbers and strings every day, however.

> By that reasoning, cryptography ought not be part of the standard
> distribution, either.  Nor should complex numbers.

Nono, the question is not whether it's part of the standard library or not.
The question is whether it should get special syntax ! Complex numbers have
special syntax, but it's very restricted, low-impact: the 'j' to create a
complex number. Cryptography does not have special syntax.

> A very large part of the *reason* it's not used more is that linear
> algebra is simply *not* natively available in any common language
> other than Matlab.

There are plenty of other possibilities. Not everything has to be killed
with special syntax.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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