Good way to do 3D vector math in language without operator overloading

Question

I would like to make a simple web application (a static website where all computation happens on the client) that generates a mesh and displays it. I have a working prototype in Unity and now I'm wondering what a good framework / language is for the task.

The problem: I would like to use Typescript or Javascript, but neither support operator overloading.

A line like this in C#

a = Vector3.forward * 3 + direction * length * 0.5;

would look horrible without operator overloading:

a = Vector3.forward.times(3).add(direction.times(length * 0.5));

What is the most elegant solution to this?

• Doc Brown: This question is in no way special to web development, so I took the freedom to remove that distracting noise from the title and and the tags.
• Peter M: Why do you feel you need to rewrite your application in a different language in order to present data in a browser?
• Toast: @PeterM I would like to generate and present the data inside a website, wihtout a server. I updated the question to be more specific. I know that you can transpile C# to Javascript, but that creates a lot of overhead.
• Peter M: @Toast Or if you really want to punish you can compile your c# to webassembly
• Peter M: @Toast I don't think I understand what you are trying to do. Are you saying that you have built a 3D scene in Unity and now you need to replicate that scene in a stand alone file that can be loaded by a browser? Or do you want to cast your existing Unity program into a browser?

Answer 1

You either pick a language that allows the syntax you want, or write it out longhand and accept that it "look[s] horrible".

For vector arithmetic, there are at least 3 different operations that are reasonably denoted by * (or times or product), and you'd have to have a language that takes return types into account to disambiguate all of them. It's then not such a burden to have to name scale, dot product and cross product.

As a note, it's likely there are existing linear algebra libraries in all the languages that you could use. Don't try to write one yourself unless you really can't find one.

• Toast: Could you name an example of a language that offers operator overloading and works well on a webpage? For me it's sufficient if the * operator only works for scaling, not the dot product or cross product.
• Caleth: @Toast C# is fine for generating html.
• Toast: Webbrowsers can't run C#.
• Turksarama: Soon you'll be able to compile C# to wasm, then the browser can run that.