3 ms·

My point was that operators don't exclude the possibility of fusion. C++ expression templates were just an example. Numba does fusion in Python.

tsimionescu 3y ago
They don't, but require significantly more machinery in the language than just operator overloading (especially if you want it to work at compile time).
- microtonal 3y ago
  Sure. But somebody writes it once and you can benefit from it. If you don't have operator overloading there isn't any chance of doing this. At any rate, I feel like the goalposts have been moved a bit. You originally said: But then you'll soon want to do A*B+C, and you'll find that fused multiply/add is a much faster operation than doing a multiplication and then addition, and soon you'll either be writing mul_add(A, B, C) anyway Which I just wanted to point out that you can fuse these operations with operator overloading as well. I am pretty sure that or you'll overengineer a complex solution to make A*B return some kind of object that can recognize the subsequent + operation etc. was a later edit, I don't remember reading it when I first reacted to your comment. If so, doing that is not really nice, since it breaks the flow of the reactions. At any rate, I think we agree on all the trade-offs. And typing the multiplication operator in HN syntax sucks :).
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    > I am pretty sure that > or you'll overengineer a complex solution to make AB return some kind of object that can recognize the subsequent + operation etc. > was a later edit, I don't remember reading it when I first reacted to your comment. If so, doing that is not really nice, since it breaks the flow of the reactions. I'm honestly not even sure. I had this in mind from the beginning, but I may have initially had a different vaguer comment about it and edited, I'm not sure. I sometimes edit comments right after posting them and then don't leave a note like I did for the later edit of the *s, since I assume no one read them. If this happened, I apologize. Either way, yes, I think we are mostly in agreement. I'm not actually a big fan of Go's minimalism, so I actually see the value of such constructs.
    - microtonal 3y ago
      Yeah, happens to me sometimes as well. Writing starts thinking, leads to more writing.

tsimionescu 3y ago

They don't, but require significantly more machinery in the language than just operator overloading (especially if you want it to work at compile time).

microtonal 3y ago
Sure. But somebody writes it once and you can benefit from it. If you don't have operator overloading there isn't any chance of doing this. At any rate, I feel like the goalposts have been moved a bit. You originally said: But then you'll soon want to do A*B+C, and you'll find that fused multiply/add is a much faster operation than doing a multiplication and then addition, and soon you'll either be writing mul_add(A, B, C) anyway Which I just wanted to point out that you can fuse these operations with operator overloading as well. I am pretty sure that or you'll overengineer a complex solution to make A*B return some kind of object that can recognize the subsequent + operation etc. was a later edit, I don't remember reading it when I first reacted to your comment. If so, doing that is not really nice, since it breaks the flow of the reactions. At any rate, I think we agree on all the trade-offs. And typing the multiplication operator in HN syntax sucks :).
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  > I am pretty sure that > or you'll overengineer a complex solution to make AB return some kind of object that can recognize the subsequent + operation etc. > was a later edit, I don't remember reading it when I first reacted to your comment. If so, doing that is not really nice, since it breaks the flow of the reactions. I'm honestly not even sure. I had this in mind from the beginning, but I may have initially had a different vaguer comment about it and edited, I'm not sure. I sometimes edit comments right after posting them and then don't leave a note like I did for the later edit of the *s, since I assume no one read them. If this happened, I apologize. Either way, yes, I think we are mostly in agreement. I'm not actually a big fan of Go's minimalism, so I actually see the value of such constructs.
  - microtonal 3y ago
    Yeah, happens to me sometimes as well. Writing starts thinking, leads to more writing.