On 10/13/2012 07:37 AM, Greg Ewing wrote:
Ram Rachum wrote:
I could say that for newbies it's one small confusion that could removed from the language. You and I have been programming for a long time so we take it for granted that * means multiplication, but for any other person that's just another weird idiosyncrasy that further alienates programming.
Do you have any evidence that a substantial number of beginners are confused by * for multiplication, or that they have trouble remembering what it means once they've been told?
If you do, is there further evidence that they would find a dot to be any clearer?
The use of a raised dot to indicate multiplication of numbers is actually quite rare even in mathematics, and I would not expect anyone without a mathematical background to even be aware of it.
In primary school we're taught that 'x' means multiplication. Later when we come to algebra, we're taught not to use any symbol at all, just write things next to each other. A dot is only used in rare cases where there would otherwise be ambiguity -- and even then it's often preferred to parenthesise things instead.
And don't forget there's great potential for confusion with the decimal point.
I'm -1 on the whole idea. Also why use · and not ×? I think unicode in source code is a bad idea.