Discussion: new operators for numerical computation

[Neil Hodgson]

> I first ran into this when I tried to implement a sparse matrix
> class. At that time, the Numpy distribution had a Matrix class that
> implemented regular matrix multiplication with '*', and I wanted to
> write another class SparseMatrix that would do the right thing
> whenever it was multiplied with a Matrix.

   I had a look at Dylan a few years ago and multimethods look good for some
areas but you also lose the encapsulating aspect of normal OO. The
functionality for a class isn't nicely tied up in one bundle but is
federated over a wide and extensible area. I would expect Python with
multimethods to look very different from current Python. Like Aahz, I'd like
to see what your idea of Python with multimethods would look like?

   Neil