I see the 10x thing happen with math. I spend a long time figuring out an algorithmic way of getting a pretty close approximation for some mathematical result,

I see the 10x thing happen with math. I spend a long time figuring out an algorithmic way of getting a pretty close approximation for some mathematical result, but it only works for small numbers and takes a long time. Then someone gives me the closed form solution and it takes one line of code, is arbitrarily close to the answer, and has constant runtime for any size number I care about. That is more like infinity-X programming, and makes math appear like a magical incantation that controls this mysterious world. It can almost convert a man to Platonism.