# Why are there all these strange stumbling blocks in Julia?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-are-there-all-these-strange-stumbling-blocks-in-julia/92644>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Tags:** syntax, python\
**Created:** [January 7, 2023, 6:19pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-are-there-all-these-strange-stumbling-blocks-in-julia/92644 "2023-01-07T18:19:30Z")\
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**Author:** ![dlfivefifty](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/dlfivefifty/32/1959_2.png) [@dlfivefifty](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/dlfivefifty)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2023, 9:42pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-are-there-all-these-strange-stumbling-blocks-in-julia/92644/40 "2023-01-08T21:42:05Z")

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I think this is an “abstract algebra” v colloquial usage issue.

For non-mathematicians “x” concatenated with “x” gives “xx” and its natural to think of this as “two x’s”, hence + feels right.

In abstract algebra \* is just an operation that satisfies different properties (I think “free group” and “word” are relevant terms). Since concatenation satisfies these properties it makes sense to use \*.

Since Julia was designed with scientific computing (or numerical mathematics) in mind it makes a lot of sense they went with the mathematical version.

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