Why Operators Are Useful

Post by peteradio » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #103

I'm amazed (and horrified) how come such an intelligent mathematician and designer of a beautiful programming language made such an obvious fuckup of using a commutative operator for string concatenation. Really, I hate python just for this single idiotic notation. I mean, it's right there in front of your eyes. He talks about the convenience of using a visually commutative operator like "+" for commutative operation…

Post by j88439h84 » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 9:56 PM UTC

ploxiln wrote: post #78

j88439h84 wrote: post #65

Python already has an 'operator' for combining dicts. d = { d1, d2}

just have to avoid HN italic syntax thing, but yes: d = {**d1, **d2}

Post by naniwaduni » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

tolmasky wrote: post #83

I've grown to dislike operator overloading quite a bit, and thus developed a general skepticism with regard to operators in general, and I think this article actually reveals why partially. First off, I'm surprised this article doesn't touch at all on the fact that operators are usually the only "blessed" functions in languages to be able to be written in infix form, as I think that's actually where many of the "bene…

Post by falcor84 » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 10:00 PM UTC

_cs2017_ wrote: post #107

enriquto wrote: post #103

I'm amazed (and horrified) how come such an intelligent mathematician and designer of a beautiful programming language made such an obvious fuckup of using a commutative operator for string concatenation. Really, I hate python just for this single idiotic notation. I mean, it's right there in front of your eyes. He talks about the convenience of using a visually commutative operator like "+" for commutative operation…

I understand the confusion it may cause to a new Python developer who comes from the mathematical background. Does it cause any problems beyond that? For example, does it interfere with some elegant patterns, or result in some bug prone code, etc? FWIW, the single main annoyance I've had with python was its treatment of strings as iterables of single character strings. While not wrong in any obvious theoretical sense…

Post by dnautics » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

naniwaduni wrote: post #115

tolmasky wrote: post #83

I've grown to dislike operator overloading quite a bit, and thus developed a general skepticism with regard to operators in general, and I think this article actually reveals why partially. First off, I'm surprised this article doesn't touch at all on the fact that operators are usually the only "blessed" functions in languages to be able to be written in infix form, as I think that's actually where many of the "bene…

The best part is that string concatenation is a perfectly cromulent "multiplication", forms a free monoid, and in line with some notations for concatenation of tuples. Funny the associations we make...