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1. Don Romano (alt) (thor@noagendasocial.com)'s status on Monday, 22-Apr-2019 06:53:33 EDT Don Romano (alt)

   Is it possible to prove that complex, vector and matrix arithmetic operators are equivalent to their real number counterparts? Does it make sense to call it multiplication when it's actually a composite operation and it doesn't behave the same? For matrices, multiplication doesn't even have the same properties, because the order you multiply two matrices in affects the result. To me, the programmer, it just looks like operator overloading, and many programmers are actually opposed to that.

   1. Don Romano (alt) (thor@noagendasocial.com)'s status on Monday, 22-Apr-2019 06:59:44 EDT Don Romano (alt)

      in reply to

      If we ever embarked on the ambitious project of merging mathematics and computer programming, we would have very harsh conflicts between very famous people. There are conventions in mathematics that we strongly discourage in computer programming, and vice versa. What this tells me is that these conventions are mostly subjective.