Discussion: Introducing new operators for matrix computation

[John Lull]

At the dawn of the third millenium (by the common reckoning), Bjorn
Pettersen <bjorn at roguewave.com> wrote (with possible deletions):

> It seems like you're trying to create a special purpose language here.
> Ie. I don't see it as general enough to be worth putting into the core
> unless you can come up with other use cases... Personally, I would much
> prefer the ability to overload the relational operators (individually,
> not through __cmp__).

I'd like to disagree here.  Matrices & linear algebra are fundamental
tools in an extremely broad set of domains.  Unfortunately, most
programming languages don't seem to recognize that.

Providing appropriate operators in the core is, IMO, as appropriate as
providing complex numbers.  Providing an easy way to effectively add
them to the core when you install an appropriate add-on package is a
reasonable alternative.  Their absence leads to really hard-to-read
code, and to me is a significant downside to Python.

Regards,
John