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by sago 2116 days ago
It's great to see some geometric algebra.

But I'm not quite sure what the package is for.

Is it for playing with geometric algebra? It is really rather simple to implement geometric algebra. As easy as understanding the internals of this package (which is not small for what it does). And in some ways a necessity for understanding the math. Like I wouldn't expect someone to just use quaternions and matrices to do 3-D, without learning how a matrix or quaternion multiplies. And I wouldn't start with a package of dozens and dozens of files in multiple directories, with a ton of inter-imports†.

So I'm assuming the package is for practical use, so it will be nice to see what they envisage it for. The only example is a single trivial operation. I'm aware it can be used for quantum physics. But my experience has been 3-D graphics. And there it is very meh.

So my long-standing problem with geometric algebra in software engineering has been... why? A frustration because it is a lot of fun.

My (imho) advice if you find it fun: you can write your own version in an evening.

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† I wonder if packages are equivalent of books 20 years ago. I remember that temptation to buy a book, as if that was how you acquired some knowledge. I was guilty of that so many times. Now, want to get geometric algebra? There is a package for that.

3 comments

A few months back I did a few experiments with this package. It allows GA-ish notation in a Python script by providing GA types and operators. It this didn't exists, you would want to write it yourself, and probably do is far less well.

I can't speak to performance. I was using it as a GA interactive calculator while I tried to wrap my mind around GA.

> I remember that temptation to buy a book, as if that was how you acquired some knowledge.

yeah... what foolish things we believed 20 years ago...

(tries not to look at the large pile of books accumulating dust in the corner of the room)

Tsundoku
It provides a unified language for many areas of mathematics, which would need to be studied separately without GA. Also, with the GA toolbox, things become much more clear and better to understand.