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Comment by koolala | Hacker News Reader

best tool for 3D math is complex numbers. most languages removed support for them.

Quaternions are an extension of complex numbers and are used ubiquitously in graphics programming for both 2D and 3D applications. Most math libraries support them.

If your gripe is over programming languages not having support for 3D math, then I think that should be expected. Most languages try to keep their standard libraries small, and their built-in types smaller. A language that has built-in support for such things would be incredible niche. Maybe JAI is what you're looking for? I'm not sure if that even contains built in support however.

J and APL are what I am looking for. JAI is not my thing.

Can't say I see a lot of bolted on complex number support in graphics or game dev.

Even the posted primer suggests you can skip the section that mentions complex numbers.

What do you use them for?

reality

Ironic.

Julia supports Complex numbers as a built-in type.

are numbers types?

It's certainly possible to interpret numbers as types, but it's not particularly common AFAIK, since there are generally more convenient interpretations of arithmetic for a given problem domain (von Neumann sets, Dedekind cuts, IEEE 754 floating point values, &c &c).

imaginary numbers to me are more real than real numbers, they are the numbers of geometry - i like them being first class numbers

Personally, I've always found that the non-rigidity of the complex numbers (i.e. that when considered as a field, they admit a non-trivial automorphism), which requires the introduction of the Re and Im operators (i.e. projection back to the reals) to banish, to be strongly suggestive that the reals have a somehow more "real" ontological status.

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