Think in Math. Write in Code

Re:Think in Math. Write in Code by lxe on Thursday November 13, 2025 @03:53PM (#45920382)

Fair point about problem-fit - some problems do naturally lend themselves to one approach over the other.

But I think the Sudoku example is less about top-down vs bottom-up and more about dogmatic adherence to abstractions (OOP in that case). Jeffries wasn't just using a 'hacker' approach - he was forcing everything through an OOP lens that fundamentally didn't fit the problem structure.

But yes, same issue can happen with the 'mathematical' approach - forcing "elegant" closed-form thinking onto problems that are inherently messy or iterative.

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Re:Think in Math. Write in Code by senderista on Thursday November 13, 2025 @09:39PM (#45923259)

I don’t think his failure had anything to do with OOP. He failed because he deliberately refused to think systematically about the problem before writing code, per the dictates of TDD.

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