Thank you for a refreshingly terse and substantive comment! Let's have more of those!
mt On 3/17/06, Scott David Daniels <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > Instead of having my geometric objects of the complex plane *be* complex > > numbes, > > there is certainly the solution of having a complex number as an attribute > > of these objects - > > and then I can take more your approach, and at the speed of C, since I > > would then > > be using the built-in for arithmettic operations. > > > > There remained something unsatisfying to me about that approach. > > > > Until something blows up about my current approach, I am quite happy with > > it. > > The thing that typically blows up is when you are (for example) > computing with a complex number that is changed halfway through > the computation by another thread (say a mouse drag). The square > root winds up being neither the square root of the original number > nor of the new changed number. Further, it becomes dicey to > try to prove that your square root function will always terminate > (a step size from one that is guaranteed to settle might be a > disaster at the new-improved value. > > So, that's why CS people like immutable primitive types. > > -- Scott David Daniels > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig