Re:Tensor considered harmful
by The_suffocated on Friday January 04, 2019 @02:21PM
(#18826873)
But if you're already happy with the conflation of "vector" and "array"
Hmm, no, I am not happy with that. All I'm saying is that while std::vector is a bad name, most people can immediately get that it has an array-like memory layout. So, there is at least some merit with this inaccurate name. This is not the case with "tensor", a term that most programmers have never heard of (at least before the advent of TensorFlow).
The only things I see to complain about are that vector spaces don't have to come with a choice of ordered finite basis and that arrays don't have to be of scalars from a field. But if you're already happy with the conflation of "vector" and "array", nothing new is happening in then speaking of multidimensional arrays as "tensors"; it's just continuing the same conflation.