mathlib

[Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@...>]

On Friday, April 4, 2014, Craig Barnes <craigbarnes85@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4 April 2014 20:57, Jeremy Ong <jeremycong@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Math/physics guy chiming in. The hyperbolic trig functions are easily
> > implementable in terms of the exponential but I think they are still
> > useful. However, I think the thing that is missing from this entire
> > conversation is an explicit explanation for the motivation behind
> > removing the functions as stated. What is the tradeoff exactly?
>
> I thought that would be obvious: to reduce maintenance, bug surface
> area, documentation, etc. Given the Lua development model, it seems
> fair to shift some of that burden to external libraries, especially
> for mostly redundant or specialized functions.

I don't want to drag up the "standard library" topic, but that context makes sense to me. Sort of like how you always include headers that you need.

Perhaps something nice to come along with the pruning? For example, moving the math functions into a library and adding some additional ones to that, for an even more complete set. This way you could remove more from Lua. 

I never use anything in math beyond min and max (and tonumber, not part of math...). From my perspective, I wouldn't miss it, but I don't feel any pain from them existing, either.

-Andrew