> Matrix multiplication or even worse, matrix inversion, is NOT a basic operation.

Neither is dividing floats, especially not on a softfloat & softdiv architecture. And yet, Zig is perfectly OK with you using division between 2 floats. Why does it get to insert expensive function calls behind operators but I can't?

Zig also lets you do remainder division for floats, which is also not a "basic operation." It's slower even then taking the sqrt of a float! Zig then also has specialized operators like saturating addition, which also isn't a "basic operation"

And then Zig also has `*` for array multiplication and `++` for array concatenation. Those are compile-time only, but still deviates from "basic operations only" territory surely. And also Zig overloads `||` to allow for the merging of enums (sorry, "error sets"), rather than only being a boolean OR.

Integer division isn't a simple one either though…

Matrix multiplication are “basic operations” in the sense that you use them as the basic block of your algorithms, and in code using such blocks you really appreciate having a simple operator for those instead of littering your formula with functions calls (which is basically writing your formulas in Polish notation, not the most legible way to write formulas …)

Matrix multiplication is a niche in the programming world.

The programming world is made of niches. That's why arithmetic operator overloading is nice, the language doesn't need to know which niche I'm in to satisfy my needs.

I somewhat agree with you, I argue that mat*mat should be an element wise operation and use a different operator for matrix operations (like numpy does it).