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The problem is rarely the math, and when it is, I can always find the explanation behind it. It's more the notation (edit: and yes, the content aware compressi
by imron 10y ago
The problem is rarely the math, and when it is, I can always find the explanation behind it.
It's more the notation (edit: and yes, the content aware compression) - I'm sure it's completely obvious to people who see/deal with it regularly, and I can appreciate its compactness, but unless it's a really simple one, the raw equations are just gobbledygook and often it's only after I've mapped it to some sort of pseudo-code that it starts to make sense for me and I can figure out what's going on.
It's a point of pain for me whenever I read a technical paper - almost to the point that I've toyed with the idea of building a 'math equations for programmers' site that helps deconstruct mathematical equations to programming form.
- kernelbandwidth 10y agoAn anecdote from the other side: I trained in Mathematics before I ever did any serious programming, and have taken only a handful of proper CS courses from a theory-heavy institution in math-heavy areas (i.e. they were math classes first, and programming was mostly an afterthought). The result is that I actually find pseudo-code descriptions of algorithms far harder to work with than equations. Without a good overview, I just see a collection of vaguely related code-statements, and not a design until I've put a lot of effort in. On the other hand, I can usually grasp the point of something expressed as an equation much more rapidly, if only because my previous experience gives me more heuristics to rely on.