So this is an offtopic question inspired by the talk: around the 57th minute in the second video there's a discussion about + and +=. Although I didn't hear the question, I assume it was equal to mine: if we had a separate += operator, then *a += b* could be defined to update the fields of a, whereas *a = a + b* requires the creation of a new object. Since "don't generate garbage in the first place" is a good form of memory optimisation in *any *garbage collected language, that sounds like quite a legit use-case to me, especially in a language dedicated to number crunching.
Now, I assume the Julia team has also thought of this, so I'm wondering why it was decided to not have the possibility to overload *+=*, *-=*, etcetera? You could still go with *a += b* being the same as *a = a + b* if it isn't explicitly defined, to keep things convenient. On Thursday, 10 July 2014 19:41:21 UTC+2, Stefan Karpinski wrote: > > This should absolutely be linked to from the home page – it's a really > great starting point for learning Julia. > > > On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 9:12 AM, Jake Bolewski <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > >> Congrats David that tutorial went really well. Perhaps now that we are >> going to be collecting a large number of videos about Julia these can be >> linked from the home page so they are bit easier to find? >> >> -Jake >> >> On Thursday, July 10, 2014 11:13:34 AM UTC-4, John Myles White wrote: >> >>> This is a really great tutorial. >>> >>> -- John >>> >>> On Jul 10, 2014, at 5:54 AM, David P. Sanders <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> >>> > Many thanks to all those who suffered my inane questions and helped >>> this to take shape, in particular: >>> > >>> > - Jeff, who persuaded me to try out Julia >>> > - Alonso & Luis, who convinced me that it was worth pursuing >>> > - The JuliaCon organizers, speakers, and participants >>> > - Leah for a couple of discussions about Julia tutorials >>> > - The Julia team at MIT who put up with me last week and moulded it: >>> Jiahao, Jake, Keno & Alan >>> > - Last, but not least, everybody who has answered my threads on >>> julia-users! >>> >>> >
