Re: Removing broadcasting from Octave

[Juan Pablo Carbajal]

2011/12/14 Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>:
> I think the whole thing may simply be a bad idea.
>
> The whole point was to do broadcasting as naturally and as frequently
> as Numpy does. However, we have to write code that works in Matlab,
> even if it's written for Octave. Plus we have the cultural baggage
> that this is not how Matlab works, therefore Octave should not work
> this way either.
>
> I can just back out all the csets that enabled this. There's no point
> in introducing new syntax for this. We already have syntax, and the
> obscurity of some operator like x $./ y vs bsxfun(@rdivide, x, y) is
> not advantageous; they're both equally obscure, and the whole point
> was to make this natural and frequent by using common syntax.
>
> I imagine there is more support for removing this feature than to keep it.
>
> - Jordi G. H.

Jordi, personally I do not think we shouldn't hinder independent
development. Matlab as a subset of Octave is an idea I like. However
in this case there is a strong clash with translation, and thinking
about it can lead to errors very difficult to detect. I do like the
idea of another operator (just to speed up coding, not for clarity,
probably).
Please do not take this a retrograde opinion.

Concerning the actions to take, I will leave that to real devs :D

-- 
M. Sc. Juan Pablo Carbajal
-----
PhD Student
University of Zürich
http://ailab.ifi.uzh.ch/carbajal/