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Because mathamaticians have thousands of years of history where they learned how to write math in a way that is readable to other mathamaticians. Software engi

Because mathamaticians have thousands of years of history where they learned how to write math in a way that is readable to other mathamaticians. Software engineering is a very different activity from the math that mathamaticians do. It makes sense that it has a different standard for what mathematicians do. There are undoubtadly ways to improve mathematics, but it seems highly arrogant to say that your <100 year old field has discovered a massive improvement that mathematics has missed for centuries.

gfodor 9y ago
appeal to tradition, poor argument. not arrogance to assert perhaps a field needs to update its methods.
- gizmo686 9y ago
  A software engineer suggesting that math should adopt the practices of software engineering sounds a lot like someone trying to generalize their domain into another domain; and saying that they know better then the domain experts in the field they are generalizing into. Occasionally they are right. Most of the time however, the domain experts are right.
  - Koshkin 9y ago
    Well, it's not just about who is right and who is wrong, not in this case. Comparing industry practices with those of scientific (especially theoretical) research may not make much sense. Plus, if you consider the way software is actually developed, you will see that the kind of honesty that is required or assumed in regard to a scientist cannot be practically expected from today's software engineer. Engineering is all about compromises, while science is not.
  - klibertp 9y ago
    As I said in another comment[1], I'm not even talking about software engineering, just a good practices of everyday programming. Could you please tell me why do you think that the name `x` is better than `element` (when talking about some set), the name `X` is better than `training_set`, and the `∑` is better than `sum`? [1] Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15914024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15914024
Koshkin 9y ago
> your <100 year old field We should not forget that the progress that science, mathematics and technology have made in the past 100 - 150 years by far exceeds all that had been done before.
threatofrain 9y ago
Cross-pollination is one of the low-hanging ways one can contribute to a discipline, and all professions are very eager to have people bring in ideas from other domains. Even if a domain is over 1000 years old, some domains have only existed for about 150-200, which means that before, the world did not have the benefit of those lenses. Now that we have them, it is only natural to mix and match to see if easy insights come out. Is there not also a risk of arrogance to demanding that another field understand everything about yours before attempting to share knowledge? It suggests that the time of day is so limited, and you have business of such importance, that you will not hear ideas below a threshold. That seems like a fine strategy for accruing quality up to a point, but it can run into local maxima more easily.
klibertp 9y ago
> Because mathamaticians have thousands of years of history where they learned how to write math in a way that is readable to other mathamaticians. No, actually, they learned to write math in a way which is a trade-off between readability and ease of writing (which is perfectly ok). The problem is exactly with thousands of years of history: the notation which is convenient to write on a clay tablet or papyrus scroll is not necessarily the best notation to use in an interactive document format displayed on computer screen. Fiction writers have as long a history as mathematicians (or much longer) but they don't insist on writing in Latin or Middle English. It is arrogant to think that the notation and practices of contemporary mathematicians are ideal and impossible to improve in any way. Lastly, writing for other mathematicians is a problem in its own right. There is a difference between conducting your day to day work, where you can write your equations on clay tablets for all I care and writing an article with a purpose of explaining your work to others. Most of the math papers completely ignore this and instead of honestly explaining the matter, authors focus on promoting themselves as great scientists. There is a lot that can be done to improve understandability (I used "readability" for this earlier, but understandability seems to fit better), to reduce the time needed to read and understand math papers. It would benefit everyone, yet almost nobody does it. There are reasons for this, I'm sure, but it still makes everyone worse off.

gfodor 9y ago

appeal to tradition, poor argument. not arrogance to assert perhaps a field needs to update its methods.

gizmo686 9y ago
A software engineer suggesting that math should adopt the practices of software engineering sounds a lot like someone trying to generalize their domain into another domain; and saying that they know better then the domain experts in the field they are generalizing into. Occasionally they are right. Most of the time however, the domain experts are right.
- Koshkin 9y ago
  Well, it's not just about who is right and who is wrong, not in this case. Comparing industry practices with those of scientific (especially theoretical) research may not make much sense. Plus, if you consider the way software is actually developed, you will see that the kind of honesty that is required or assumed in regard to a scientist cannot be practically expected from today's software engineer. Engineering is all about compromises, while science is not.
- klibertp 9y ago
  As I said in another comment[1], I'm not even talking about software engineering, just a good practices of everyday programming. Could you please tell me why do you think that the name `x` is better than `element` (when talking about some set), the name `X` is better than `training_set`, and the `∑` is better than `sum`? [1] Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15914024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15914024

Koshkin 9y ago

> your <100 year old field We should not forget that the progress that science, mathematics and technology have made in the past 100 - 150 years by far exceeds all that had been done before.

threatofrain 9y ago

Cross-pollination is one of the low-hanging ways one can contribute to a discipline, and all professions are very eager to have people bring in ideas from other domains. Even if a domain is over 1000 years old, some domains have only existed for about 150-200, which means that before, the world did not have the benefit of those lenses. Now that we have them, it is only natural to mix and match to see if easy insights come out. Is there not also a risk of arrogance to demanding that another field understand everything about yours before attempting to share knowledge? It suggests that the time of day is so limited, and you have business of such importance, that you will not hear ideas below a threshold. That seems like a fine strategy for accruing quality up to a point, but it can run into local maxima more easily.

klibertp 9y ago

> Because mathamaticians have thousands of years of history where they learned how to write math in a way that is readable to other mathamaticians. No, actually, they learned to write math in a way which is a trade-off between readability and ease of writing (which is perfectly ok). The problem is exactly with thousands of years of history: the notation which is convenient to write on a clay tablet or papyrus scroll is not necessarily the best notation to use in an interactive document format displayed on computer screen. Fiction writers have as long a history as mathematicians (or much longer) but they don't insist on writing in Latin or Middle English. It is arrogant to think that the notation and practices of contemporary mathematicians are ideal and impossible to improve in any way. Lastly, writing for other mathematicians is a problem in its own right. There is a difference between conducting your day to day work, where you can write your equations on clay tablets for all I care and writing an article with a purpose of explaining your work to others. Most of the math papers completely ignore this and instead of honestly explaining the matter, authors focus on promoting themselves as great scientists. There is a lot that can be done to improve understandability (I used "readability" for this earlier, but understandability seems to fit better), to reduce the time needed to read and understand math papers. It would benefit everyone, yet almost nobody does it. There are reasons for this, I'm sure, but it still makes everyone worse off.