I got pretty far in math (ms in cs with half of the classes being legit math classes) I never got the obsession either. in general it always felt to me like a bunch of awkward people trying to ascribe aesthetic value to something that had none. it also always felt self-aggrandizing: here look at how beautiful is this game I play where I made up the rules.

edit: down votes on hn without comments? boo

Well, most of your post involves insulting a fairly broad group of people.

>this is the dumbest math trope ever. i bet you're the undergrad.

Undergrad math major here. Please don't insult us; even we know to cringe when this identity is mentioned as some amazing beauty of math.

In pure math, the journey is the reward; in applied math, the destination is, and how you get there is unimportant.

That, IMO, is why applied math rarely is beautiful. Pure math often is because no sane person would spend time doing ugly work that doesn't even lead to useful results.

Computational proofs such as that of the four color theorem have changed that a bit. That may be the reason some mathematicians don't accept them as proofs.

Similarly, "publish or perish" may have led to more proofs in pure mathematics that are more hard work than inspiration, and of course, zillions of hours have been spent looking for counterexamples of theorems in pure mathematics.

What you said made me want to write surpisingly terse and concise code. It's what I shall try to do from hereon.

Terseness and conciseness are great, but should be balanced with readability and ease of editing.

Now there are too many rules. I'll just go back to writing crap code.