From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fac41,1bc17347df0c2d32 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 1008e3,1bc17347df0c2d32 X-Google-Attributes: gid1008e3,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,1bc17347df0c2d32 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: clines@delete_this.airmail.net (Kevin Cline) Subject: Re: Why one school changed from Pascal to C++ Date: 1997/05/03 Message-ID: <8229B62E52EAC144.6C6C6DF4FB6915C3.A10EAF24E2BF24E1@library-proxy.airnews.net>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 238998978 References: <33664F10.6B76@mathernet.com> <5kd7eo$2b4@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk> X-Orig-Message-ID: <336a846b.413804@news.airmail.net> Organization: INTERNET AMERICA NNTP-Proxy-Relay: library.airnews.net Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.modula3 Date: 1997-05-03T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: rrw1000@cus.cam.ac.uk (Richard Watts) wrote: > It's interesting that they seem to rate things like initialisation >and overloading as plusses for ADT implementation: experience seems to >indicate that full transparency is often a bad idea (do you _really_ >want to give the impression that matrix multiplication is >commutative ?). Why should the use of '*' imply commutativity? Surely almost all programmers working on code that does multiply matrices will know that matrix multiplication is not commutative. If they don't, that is a training problem, not an argument against operator overloading. It's no more obvious that the order of arguments to matrix_multiply is important. Symbols are used in mathematics because they are easier to read than text. They are used in computer programs for the same reason.