🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi!

[Just  a remark:  This seems to become a heated debate, maybe we should all
take a second to breathe through before calling each other names.]

On Thu 02.04.1996 around 22:58:28 pitre@n5160d.nrl.navy.mil (Richard Pitre) wrote
in message "Why no Complex Arithmetic ?":

> I'm saying that a trivial extension of the language would simplify a tremendous
> amount of numerical code by eliminating a lot of logic at the programmers level.

   If  I'm  right  that you are still talking about complex arithmetic here
(and not vector/matrix stuff) just let me remind you of the following fact:

   All books on (practical) numerical mathematics that I've come across do
   fine with REAL.

AFAIK  (please correct me) not even the various *-XDS languages by Kuchling
et.al.   have  a  COMPLEX type, even it they were specifically tailored for
numerics (exact rounding in an interval arithmethic).

   Although  a  complex  type seems pleasing, I'm not yet convinced that it
really  would  cause  a lot of algorithms to be converted to actually using
COMPLEX  instead  of  REAL.   Please  give  me  an  example  algorithm that
*seriously* benefits from a COMPLEX type.

> This would open up a possibility of interest from a significant community of
> numerical programmers that would otherwise ignore Oberon. 

   All  "numeric  guys"  at  my  university  use Pascal or FORTRAN and I've
already  tried  to show them the benefits of Oberon/object-orientation, eg.
in  a FEM processor.  No chance, they won't even listen carefully.  If it's
not Pascal or FORTRAN, it's not good (in *their* opinion).
                  _
By(T)e...   /| _ //3000 /\ People who use Pascal for serious programming |\
   Peter... \| \X/\miga \/ fall into a fatal trap.  (Brian W. Kernighan) |/