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[Python-ideas] Is there a good reason to use * for multiplication?

Cameron Simpson cs at zip.com.au
Sat Oct 13 06:27:28 CEST 2012 
On 12Oct2012 13:27, Ram Rachum <ram.rachum at gmail.com> wrote:
| Today a funny thought occurred to me. Ever since I've learned to program 
| when I was a child, I've taken for granted that when programming, the sign 
| used for multiplication is *. But now that I think about it, why? Now that 
| we have Unicode, why not use ยท ?

Because it looks astonishingly like ".". Reason enough to avoid it
altogether, for any purpose, in a language that uses "." quite a like,
as Python does.

A big -100 from me.

Besides, "*" works well and has a long history as multiplication in many
languages. This isn't broken.

As a child, I was taught "x" (that's intened as a small cross diagonally
oriented, not the letter I've used here) for multiplication. Let's
support that too! It also looks like another character (specifically, a
lot like the letter "x").

Seriously, I think this is a bad idea on a readability/usability basis,
and an unnecessary idea from a functional point of view - it adds noting
not already there and mucks with the "one obvious way to do it" notion
into the bargain.

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au>

Climber: "I don't know, I can't see the next bolt."
Belayer: "Remember X, when in doubt, run it out."
This should be read with a good Birmingham accent, something like "Remember
'oids, win in dowt, roon it owt"
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