Re: [q-lang-users] Complex numbers

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

bri...@co... wrote:
> long-term suggestion made while strolling down the lane, whistling 
> nonchalantly enjoying the spring flowers and sunshine:

Hi Brian, I realize that you are probably joking here :), but anyway...

>  quaternions and octonians also as algebraic data types, together with 
> the reals and the complexes under the class of the "Normed Algebras."  

That's fun stuff for us mathematicians to play with, but of little or no 
use for everyday programming. Complex and rational numbers are fine, 
they should certainly be in the stdlib (complex nums already are, for 
rational numbers I'll probably add a stripped-down version of Rob's 
module in the near future).

But lets not go overboard with this, otherwise people will soon be 
demanding vector spaces over polynomial rings and whatelse... And why 
should we take away all the fun for the programmer to find out how to 
implement stuff like this him/herself? ;-)

Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag