On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 6:37 AM, Jakob Bowyer <jkbbwr@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There is that but from a math point of view the syntax a * b does make sence.
> Its slightly clearer and makes more sense to **people from outside of a programming background**.

(emphasis added)

These are not the only people writing and reading code, and decisions
about syntax should favor improving the readability
for coders across the board, not simply a single subset of them.

True. But unless there's another common meaning for multiplying sets, there are only two groups of people to consider: Those who know it as the cross product, and those who have no idea what it might mean. They former will be surprised by the current situation when it doesn't work, the latter will have to look it up when they run into it.

it's not really any worse than using + for string concatenation. Except for the associativity issue.

<mike