4 ms·
Today I learned that tau/4 radians is a much smarter sounding way of writing 90*. Of course it takes up more space, and isn’t any more precise, so I’ll probabl
by djrogers 8y ago
Today I learned that tau/4 radians is a much smarter sounding way of writing 90*. Of course it takes up more space, and isn’t any more precise, so I’ll probably never remember or choose to use it. At least I won’t have to google it again the next time someone smarter than me writes it!
- ummonk 8y ago"90*" is unrecognizable. "90 degrees" is recognizable, but takes up more space than "tau/4". "𝜏/4" takes only 3 characters of course, same as "90°".
- dwild 8y ago> "90 degrees" is recognizable, but takes up more space than "tau/4" You forgot the unit on one of them, it's "tau/4 radians" and not "tau/4", which make it longer than "90 degrees". "𝜏/4 rad" is still longer than "90°" too. EDIT: I just found out that there is also a shorter symbol for rad which is the superscript c, but I don't know how to write it here and it's still longer. Wikipedia also say that it's rarely used because it's too similar to the degree sign.
- codezero 8y agohow about a new single character constant that encodes tau/4 radians? How about Ϟʹ – the ancient greek symbol for 90 :)
- Someone 8y agoWho reads Ancient Greek, and why use two characters? Just use ∟ or ⦜ (Unicode “Right Angle” (U+221F), respectively “Right Angle Variant With Square” (U+299C). Don’t confuse either with ⌞, “Bottom Left Corner” (U+231E))
- codezero 8y agoTau is a Greek character, which is why I jokingly suggested this. Also, the above _is_ a single character, however, your suggestion is much more practical. The one with the square makes more sense since it may be ambiguous otherwise (90 or 270 degrees)
- codezero 8y agolong after edit: I guess it's not technically one character!
- ummonk 8y agoRadians is a natural unit. You don’t need to specify it if you’re talking about rotations. It is like how you need to specify % if talking percent but don’t need any units if talking perunum.
- twic 8y agoThat's exactly why we come to HN, right?
- tzs 8y agoIf you want to save space, there is no need to mention the amount of rotation. This is sufficient: > They aren't special portrait monitors, they're normal monitors rotated. The amount of rotation is implied by "normal" and "portrait".