Re: turning "Octave:broadcast" warning off by default

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On Thu, 2015-02-19 at 19:57 +0100, Philip Nienhuis wrote:
> IIRC the warning is also there because Octave strives for Matlab
> compatibility. Automatic broadcasting isn't ML-compatible AFAIK.

I always take "Matlab-compatible" to mean, "if it works in Matlab, it works in
Octave". I don't usually take it to mean "if it breaks in Matlab it
must also break in Octave".

I get impatient when people want "Matlab-compatible" to mean "exactly
like Matlab, no worse, and certainly no better".

As to turning off the warning by default, I don't think it's
widespread and accepted enough in our corner of scientific computing
(i.e. the Matlab side, as opposed to the R or Python or Julia side),
for most people to be used to it. And it's a very surprising behaviour
for many seasoned Matlab users who expect an error message there.

If Octave ever becomes dominant enough for most people to find
broadcasting natural, we should disable the warning. I wish we could
phrase it in a different way so it doesn't sound like the user did
something incorrect, but some sort of warning should stay.

- Jordi G. H.