Talk:Multi-dimensional array: Difference between revisions

 

:: It's probably good, for this site, to move discussions of internals on task pages to task pages that are about exposing those internals (emphasis on "task pages" because the corresponding talk pages sometimes wind up like this one). That said, I do understand that there's something of a tradition in talking about such details (and, also, that these traditions all too often get historical issues wrong). --[[User:Rdm|Rdm]] ([[User talk:Rdm|talk]]) 09:02, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

::''not explaining that matrices are normally considered as "row major" in mathematics'' But they are not! There is no such thing as '''storage''' in mathematics. When you write a matrix by hand, elements are written in a square. There is no mathematical reason prefer rows to columns: rows for equations? But then columns for basis vectors.

::Regarding puzzled users: anyone doing numerical analysis should be aware that array storage depends on language and/or mathematical library. Fortran is not the only one to use column-major order. Matlab and R do. Of course it comes from Fortran roots, but nevertheless, they do. It's the right place in RC to tell the difference, not to express your personal opinion that you don't understand why it's so. After all, one could also ask, why other languages did not follow the Fortran convention?