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A comment on Ask HN: How did you learn math notation?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: How did you learn math notation? by colechristensen on Thursday November 25, 2021 @11:17AM (#29342536)
Scientists and engineers write code with single variables all the time and don’t seem to have any large amount of trouble with it. Long variable names seriously limit the ability to put complexity in one place and make it understandable.

Take a look at this and tell me it would be easier to understand if all the symbols were words instead of single characters: https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/nseqs.html

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How did you learn math notation? by randomNumber7 on Thursday November 25, 2021 @11:33AM (#29342674)
This is pretty understandable because:

1. They explain all abbreviations at the top.

2. There is a lenghty text explaining the formula.

3. It's mathematically pretty easy if you know partial differentation.

Also scientists and engineers write pretty horrible code....

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: How did you learn math notation? by colechristensen on Thursday November 25, 2021 @12:12PM (#29343032)
It’s not horrible, it’s different, has different goals and different audiences. Context is king, and the bulk of professional programmers criticizing scientist code is just lack of context and a different set of priorities.

From a more science based background i often think programmers write horrible code as i search in vain for where anything actually happens in a sea of abstractions.

[ Parent | on HN ]