🚀 go-pugleaf

Richard Pitre wrote:
> 
> Why leave out complex numbers and complex
> transcendental functions? Maybe Oberon is slightly simpler without this
> but any programs that use complex arithmetic are automatically more complicated
> and less efficient without language support.
> I see no good argument for leaving complex arithmetic out of Oberon
> if you've already gone to the trouble to include  floating point numbers.
> Why alienate so many people who desparately need good tools like this?
> If you don't think its a problem then its because you've never tried
> to do it. The readability goes to hell.
> 
> richard
Have you ever wondered why complex numbers are not a part of C, C++, Ada, or
Smalltalk?  If every extension that someone thought was important was
incorporated into every language then we would have a bunch of PL/1 compilers
floating around that no one could use.  Yes, complex numbers are important to
some scientific calculations, but the answer would be to develop a standard
class module called Complex.  In fact, the whole reason for object-oriented
languages is to be able to make extensions such as that.  Unfortunately, 
while there are many standard modules for handling fancy GUI designs for 
both Oberon/F and System 3, some of the simple but practical modules have
been overlooked.  Oberon/F just recently added a string library, but it's
done almost exclusively from a procedural instead of an OO point of view.
The procedure call interfaces are bulky and unintuitive.  I'm still looking
for a string library in any language that will let me handle strings as 
easily as I can handle them in BASIC.