3 ms·

It's cute for trivial cases like algebra libraries, but very ripe for abuse (std::cout) and hard to get right for scenarios where it’s two different types being

It's cute for trivial cases like algebra libraries, but very ripe for abuse (std::cout) and hard to get right for scenarios where it’s two different types being operated on, especially if a) the leftmost one is a built-in or b) various combinations of casts could get you to a supported operator. Rust obviously does do operator overloading, but it addresses (a) mostly through culture, and (b) by insisting on explicit casts everywhere.

suremarc 4y ago
> It's cute for trivial cases like algebra libraries I don't understand this wording. Algebra libraries are nontrivial to implement, as the algorithms that operate on such structures can be exceedingly complex, and there are many types of algebra relevant to computer programming. Linear algebra (and its big brother, tensor algebra), boolean algebras, polynomials...
- bee_rider 4y ago
  This is the example I had in the back of my head. Like ok I'll write my code in C or Fortran and dutifully provide all 13 arguments to BLAS because I'm a dummy but I thought people used languages like Go to avoid this sort of thing.
- mikepurvis 4y ago
  I get that under the hood, a library like eigen has loads of tricks and optimizations to make vector and matrix operations maximally efficient on modern CPUs. But the comment was specifically about the interface to those operations, that it's convenient and non-harmful ("cute") to have an infix operator just work, because no one would expect that multiplying vectors is going to secretly be a function call that could block or throw or have other unknown side effects the way something like using "stream insertion" on a logger object might. Or have an uncertain effect, like defining operator+ for just one of the multiple possible schemes by which two dicts may be combined.

3 ms·

It's cute for trivial cases like algebra libraries, but very ripe for abuse (std::cout) and hard to get right for scenarios where it’s two different types being

by mikepurvis 4y ago

suremarc 4y ago
> It's cute for trivial cases like algebra libraries I don't understand this wording. Algebra libraries are nontrivial to implement, as the algorithms that operate on such structures can be exceedingly complex, and there are many types of algebra relevant to computer programming. Linear algebra (and its big brother, tensor algebra), boolean algebras, polynomials...
- bee_rider 4y ago
  This is the example I had in the back of my head. Like ok I'll write my code in C or Fortran and dutifully provide all 13 arguments to BLAS because I'm a dummy but I thought people used languages like Go to avoid this sort of thing.
- mikepurvis 4y ago
  I get that under the hood, a library like eigen has loads of tricks and optimizations to make vector and matrix operations maximally efficient on modern CPUs. But the comment was specifically about the interface to those operations, that it's convenient and non-harmful ("cute") to have an infix operator just work, because no one would expect that multiplying vectors is going to secretly be a function call that could block or throw or have other unknown side effects the way something like using "stream insertion" on a logger object might. Or have an uncertain effect, like defining operator+ for just one of the multiple possible schemes by which two dicts may be combined.