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How do you cope with the lack of vector operators? I am basically only writing vector code all day and night, and the lack of infix operators for vectors is just as unacceptable as not having them for normal ints and floats would be.

Nobody is asking for Pizza * Weather && (Lizard + Sleep), that strawman argument to justify ints and floats as the only algebraic types is infuriating :(

I'd love to read a blog post about your Zig setup and workflow BTW.

flohofwoe 3 days ago [ - ]

I'm coming from C so I got used to writing code like this ;)

    fn computeVsParams(rx: f32, ry: f32) shd.VsParams {
        const rxm = mat4.rotate(rx, .{ .x = 1.0, .y = 0.0, .z = 0.0 });
        const rym = mat4.rotate(ry, .{ .x = 0.0, .y = 1.0, .z = 0.0 });
        const model = mat4.mul(rxm, rym);
        const aspect = sapp.widthf() / sapp.heightf();
        const proj = mat4.persp(60.0, aspect, 0.01, 10.0);
        return shd.VsParams{ .mvp = mat4.mul(mat4.mul(proj, state.view), model) };
    }

Zig also has a `@Vector` type for SIMD-style vector math though, but I haven't been using that because sometimes I want to add methods to the vector types.

What I would like to see though is a Ziggified version of the Clang extended vector and matrix extensions.

smj-edison 3 days ago [ - ]

If you want to write really cursed code, you could use comptime to implement a function that takes comptime strings and parses them into vector function calls ;)

pixelpoet 3 days ago [ - ]

I've actually thought about that, and looked a little into canonical/idiomatic ways to implement a DSL in Zig, and didn't find anything small and natural.

I just find it intellectually offensive that this extremely short-sighted line is drawn after ints and floats, any other algebraic/number types aren't similarly dignified.

If people had to write add(2, mul(3, 4)) etc for ints and floats the language would be used by exactly nobody! But just because particular language designers aren't using complex numbers and vectors all day, they interpret the request as wanting stupid abstract Monkey + Banana * Time or whatever. I really wish more Language People appreciated that there's only really one way to do complex numbers, it's worth doing right once and giving proper operators, too. Sure, use dot(a, b) and cross(a, b) etc, that's fine.

The word "number" is literally half of "complex number", and it's not like there are 1024 ways to implement 2D, 3D, 4D vector and complex number addition, subtraction, multiplication, maybe even division. There are many languages one can look to for guidance here, e.g. OpenCL[0] and Odin[1].

[0] OpenCL Quick Reference Card, masterpiece IMO: https://www.khronos.org/files/opencl-1-2-quick-reference-car...

[1] Odin language, specifically the operators: https://odin-lang.org/docs/overview/#operators