+1 for using multi-dispatch to separate concepts and to make things more readable:
cholfact -> factorize(Cholesky, ....) sprandn -> Sparse(Normal, m, n) The main benefit isn't readability but for speed and generality. If you want to use a different distribution (in sprandn) or a different factorization type then than is easily parameterized and can be specialized by the compiler to make the fastest code. This desire to stick with "defacto standards" doesn't make sense because it is coming from a different language that doesn't have multidispatch and has poor types. As an example, what would you call the function that factorizes polynomials? The answer for MATLAB is "factor". I would much rather it be: factorize(Polynomial, ....) This is self documenting and all factorization methods have the same name and and can be easily found. It would be nice to also have: ?factorize(Polynomial, ....) To return the help for how to factorize a polynomial and some way to find out all the types that can go in the first argument of factorize(). If people are really set on not learning something new then there could be a MATLAB compatibility package that does: cholfact -> factorize(Cholesky ...) But that leads to bad code so I would rather it just be a chapter in the documentation for MATLAB users (or maybe a script to do the conversion). Forwards compatibility from MATLAB doesn't exist anyways so why stick to it when it leads to worse code? I agree with François's reasons for why people use MATLAB...it isn't because they came up with the best function names for all languages to use...it likely just happened and people got used to it. Glen
