Mixed operations between Poly and Number via promote

[pwl]

I thought that operations mixing Poly and Number could be defined in a simpler way if a number could be promoted to a Poly in a canonical way. I also added a conversion of an array of numbers to an array of polynomials via map.

[StefanKarpinski]

This may well have a detrimental impact on performance.

[pwl]

I have just tested it and you are indeed correct. My implementation is roughly 100x slower, I didn't notice this earlier. Is there a way to salvage this approach or is it doomed by design?

[StefanKarpinski]

The issue is that it semantically creates an intermediate polynomial object. The current way that polynomials are represented is not something that the compiler can eliminate, so it has to actually create the object. So, long story short, no, not really.

[pwl]

Ok, I get it. Do you think you could merge the conversion from Number and Array{Number,n} to Poly? I will remove the promotion and related code.

[StefanKarpinski]

The conversions do seem sensible. I don't have permission to merge stuff on this repo – @Keno can do it.