4 ms·

Vectors and perhaps matrices are about the only valid use case I have ever come across, so I agree with GP that it's not worth it. And that's speaking as someon

Vectors and perhaps matrices are about the only valid use case I have ever come across, so I agree with GP that it's not worth it. And that's speaking as someone who once implemented a path class with a subtraction operator that would return the relative path between two absolute ones. I thought I was very clever. I feel sorry for the developers who had to figure out what that was about after I left..

coldpie 3y ago
Ah, matrices! Does * mean dot product, cross product, or the usually less useful matrix multiplication? Ooh, or maybe you should you use . for dot! How clever that would be! > And that's speaking as someone who once implemented a path class with a subtraction operator that would return the relative path between two absolute ones. I thought I was very clever. Haha! It's ok. The temptation to be clever with operators is too strong, few can resist before getting burned (or more usually, burning others!) at least once.
- owalt 3y ago
  > Ah, matrices! Does * mean dot product, cross product, or the usually less useful matrix multiplication? Ooh, or maybe you should you use . for dot! How clever that would be! Why the snark? The fact that you're free to make a bad choice does not imply that having a free choice must be bad. Obviously neither dot nor cross product should be *. It should be the Hadamard product or matrix multiplication. You can choose one convention for your code and be perfectly happy for it. As a follow-up question: How do you feel about languages like Fortran and Matlab then? Is it actually a good thing that mathematics convenience features are relegated to a few math-oriented languages and kept away from all the others? (Or are the linear algebra types in these languages offensive as well?)
  - kps 3y ago
    Maybe C++26 will let us write operator·() and operator×().
    - enriquto 3y ago
      In C++34 we'll finally have a way of overloading the empty string operator, so that we can, at last, write AB for the product of matrices A and B. As God intended.
      - andrewf 3y ago
        Stroustrup, B. (1998, April 1) Generalizing Overloading for C++2000. AT&T Labs. https://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf https://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf
  - woooooo 3y ago
    The benefits from operator overloading are "I can show this to a mathematician and it looks like what they're used to". The downsides lurk in the corners of whether it's actually doing what you think. I'll pass.

coldpie 3y ago

Ah, matrices! Does * mean dot product, cross product, or the usually less useful matrix multiplication? Ooh, or maybe you should you use . for dot! How clever that would be! > And that's speaking as someone who once implemented a path class with a subtraction operator that would return the relative path between two absolute ones. I thought I was very clever. Haha! It's ok. The temptation to be clever with operators is too strong, few can resist before getting burned (or more usually, burning others!) at least once.

owalt 3y ago
> Ah, matrices! Does * mean dot product, cross product, or the usually less useful matrix multiplication? Ooh, or maybe you should you use . for dot! How clever that would be! Why the snark? The fact that you're free to make a bad choice does not imply that having a free choice must be bad. Obviously neither dot nor cross product should be *. It should be the Hadamard product or matrix multiplication. You can choose one convention for your code and be perfectly happy for it. As a follow-up question: How do you feel about languages like Fortran and Matlab then? Is it actually a good thing that mathematics convenience features are relegated to a few math-oriented languages and kept away from all the others? (Or are the linear algebra types in these languages offensive as well?)
- kps 3y ago
  Maybe C++26 will let us write operator·() and operator×().
  - enriquto 3y ago
    In C++34 we'll finally have a way of overloading the empty string operator, so that we can, at last, write AB for the product of matrices A and B. As God intended.
    - andrewf 3y ago
      Stroustrup, B. (1998, April 1) Generalizing Overloading for C++2000. AT&T Labs. https://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf https://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf
- woooooo 3y ago
  The benefits from operator overloading are "I can show this to a mathematician and it looks like what they're used to". The downsides lurk in the corners of whether it's actually doing what you think. I'll pass.