Re: Matlab 2016b introduces automatic broadcasting and functions in scripts

[Carnë Draug]

On 20 August 2016 at 22:08, PhilipNienhuis <address@hidden> wrote:
> Carnë Draug wrote
>> Hey guys
>>
>> I just came across the Matlab release notes for 2016b [1].
>>
>> Apparently they have introduced automatic broadcasting (they call it
>> implicit expansion), and support for functions in scripts files.
>>
>> Should we stop giving language-extension warnings for automatic
>> broadcasting?
>>
>> Carnë
>>
>> [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/matlab/comments/4n7oy9/r2016b_prerelease/
>
> What exactly would be the benefit?
>
> If it is really so useful to follow bleeding-edge Matlab I could think up
> more important things than dropping warnings that can be very useful.
> As Lachlan pointed out in patch #8983, broadcasting can make debugging a lot
> harder and it can introduce obscure bugs (think of unexpected / unintended
> memory overflow), so completely doing away with
> automatic-broadcasting-applied-warnings at this moment is a bit too quick
> IMO.  In bug #45761 it is even mentioned that Octave's broadcast warning
> might need to be reinstated.
> Indeed, I have always interpreted automatic broadcasting less as a language
> extension but more as a functional extension. So removing it from the
> language-extension collection and giving it is own place (with default
> "off") looks a lot more logical to me.
>
> BTW do you know if Matlab is able to supply a warning if "implicit
> expansion" happened, if desired by the user?
>
> It may well be that the Matlab community will pick up automatic broadcasting
> / implicit expansion very slowly.
> As far as my experience goes in business environments, the newest Matlab is
> rarely rolled out immediately and if if it is new features are rarely
> immediately used for production means.
>
> All of which is no reason to keep looking backwards.....
>
> Philip

Don't know what Matlab will do.  I don't have access to it, I only came
across the release notes on that reddit thread so that's all I know.
We will have to wait and see.

Anyway, if Matlab introduces it we can finally stop arguing about it
and that makes me very happy.

There is also the thing that two of the main things that Matlab is adding
is stuff that Octave has introduced and supported for a very long time.
We must be doing something right, and that's something to be positive
about too.