Discussion: Introducing new operators for matrix computation

[Huaiyu Zhu]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2000 20:24:16 GMT, Garry Hodgson <garry at sage.att.com> wrote:
>
>but outside of this thread, we've seen no great outcry of python
>users bemoaning the lack of cryptic operators.  changing the language
>for this specific domain is not a good idea.  putting in new operators
>because they might be usefully overloaded for other specific domains
>is little better.
>

That's the beauty of numerical computation, because all kinds of
applications, from animation on your screen to controlling satallite in
space to analysing molecular structures to calculating consumer preference
could all be expressed in the language of linear algebra.  (Mathematicians
study spaces more abstract than linear spaces, but you wouldn't want to hear
about them before appreciating the usefulness of linear algebra.) For
example, all deterministic procedures are functions, and most functions we
see are simply points in an (infinite dimensional) space.

If there were no expression of strings like in "a string", you would find
that outside a thread about string literals, there was no great outcry of
users bemoaning the lack of cryptic quote symbols.  Certainly you woudn't
hear people discuss http module or regular expression or anything like that.
Actually, under that kind of condition most of text processing crowd
wouldn't even be here, and most people here would definitely regard text
processing as a specific domain, which it actually is.

you-need-at-least-some-basic-tools-before-doing-much-useful-things-ly yr's

Huaiyu