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Comment by baazaa | Hacker News Reader

i feel like i'd want operator overloading when dealing with quaternions, which zig eschews for no good reason

I just hit this, within minutes of starting... A cursory search implies this is a won't-fix: https://ziglang.org/learn/overview/#small-simple-language

Operating overloading is considered hidden control flow. I appreciate that the team set made and are adhering to principles, but it does not mitigate the downside of this omission to me. I do a lot of scientific and numerical computing, and use vectors frequently. Non-overloaded vector syntax is tough to read and write.

I'm aborting. This is an unfortunate decision.

>I'm aborting. This is an unfortunate decision

LOL. At least that is 20 min of trying. ( From the first message to above )

After some thought, I think I know why this is irritating. The domains I imagine Zig would be suited for are also ones where I use vector operations regularly. Almost a 1:1 overlap:

  - Embedded (Accelerations, velocities, positions)
  - Robotics
  - Games
  - Performance-critical scientific and numerical code (Cosmology, computational chemistry etc)
  - 3D graphics and visualizations

Did you try this with Julia too? Their vector & matrix support is literally first class.

Hah yea. Julia's math syntax is the best I've seen, of any language. I wish rust and python etc had something similiar! Killer feature.

Zig has builtin support for vectors[1], which I think provides some alleviation. But sure, it's not as complete or flexible as a whole vector/matrix library.

[1]: https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#Vectors

Great to know! From the description in that page and yours, it sounds like this is a related, but different concept. Specifically, that page includes use of a `Vec3` of the sort I was implementing, done with a `struct` and methods, vice @Vector.

Was his research incorrect? How long should he continue to try to overcome what he believes to be a show-stopper constraint?

He has other choices after all. If this represents a negative that out-weighs the positives, so be it.

These same design decisions in Zig may make it a top tier option for other tasks. Just not this one.

Sorry I didn't mean to laugh at his effort. I was laughing more like I see this happening on HN in real time sort of mins after trying. I do think he has a point though. Not entirely sure how zig should tackle it or tackling it at all.

This is what I felt initally, too. However, you easily become used to the lack of overloading, and since the language has method syntax sugar you can easily get used to .add() over +. I'd recommend you give it another shot.

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