3 ms·

There must be some name for the effect seen here so regularly, which might best be described as the contrast in magnitudes of something being posted to the comm

There must be some name for the effect seen here so regularly, which might best be described as the contrast in magnitudes of something being posted to the comments made about it. In this case we have a fundamental contribution to mathematics that is succinctly captured in 252 words, producing a 209 word complaint essentially about whitespace.

jiggawatts 6y ago
I can reformat whitespace, if I care to read through a piece of mis-aligned code, but that's not at all the criticism here. You missed my point entirely. This is like putting wooden wagon wheels on an F1 race car, and then complaining that people should appreciate the sleek lines of the car and stop commenting about the wheels. The code posted on GitHub is wasting the effort and the talent that went into this algorithm. It's optimising for brevity, something utterly useless, over utility, which is essential.
- james412 6y ago
  The race car in this instance would be the paper, it is well presented and assuming it survives scrutiny, eternal. One particular manifestation of it for one contemporary system might better be thought of as the garnish on the free salad bowl placed next to the car
  - rudedogg 6y ago
    > The race car in this instance would be the paper, it is well presented and assuming it survives scrutiny, eternal. The parent is pointing out how the code is the only approachable version of the paper for many people. Making it read like mathematics renders it useless - since it only speaks to the audience that can already understand the paper. I fall into this category. If the code had reasonable variable names and comments I could probably figure out how it works. But since it reads like the wall of LaTeX on the linked page - I can't pierce it without learning a lot of mathematics. I think that says a lot about mathematic notation.
mikorym 6y ago
As mathematicians, we find solace in the void of the universe. We embrace it, we suppose the existence of the empty set, and we are forever saved from the apparent infinitude of assaults against the great potential of the human condition. Often, this kind of paradise is interrupted. Naive sets give way to ones with hyphenated names, and then some mathematicians prefer to branch before such hyphenated names, and in turn prolong the paradise that indeed continues to exist. Some mathematicians decide to focus on the branching point, call it Paradise in its own respect, and appreciate it for what it is. Not for what it is not. At the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century, a new kind of mathematician emerged that branched into an emerging area. This emerging area specialises in a form of logic popularly referred to as coding or programming. Very quickly, it turned out that this is a more social area of mathematics (though pure mathematics is indefinitely married to the concept of the mathematical seminar). However, it is implicitly social. The sociability is in the form of subtle comments, rants about Git conventions, and indeed about the use of whitespace. This convention somehow seems to have a purpose. That you can write a story through codes and comments, without resorting to the actual English language, but rather the through implementing the English Universal Psuedocode Nonconvention. And though there shall always be trouble in Paradise, the beauty of this strange new branch is that we can read it as prose—not unlike the great French mathematicians used to do—and have a paradise simply in the bliss of effort. Of course, of the dark art of machine code, and indeed of the strange validity of mathematics in general, we shall not say much, but simply read jokes about Yoda and try not to argue with a program that beyond all expectation continues to give the correct mapping to the codomain for all individual function inputs from its domain that we can enumerate in a reasonable amount of time.
- james412 6y ago
  This is possibly the most fabulously pompous faulty comparison I've ever read. To think that somewhere, someone might place the work of the common developer alongside that of a mathematician is hilarious. Sure, it's possible to say development has a mathematical basis, much as you could say operating a speedboat or a kite has. Our trade has about as much in common with mathematics as a convent has to a brothel
  - 6y ago
starmftronajoll 6y ago
There is a name for this phenomenon, “bike-shedding.”
quadrifoliate 6y ago
I think the commenter went through the effort of trying to use this and faced obstacles while doing so. They have a much more valid reason to complain here than drive-by comments of the sort you're describing, which are superficial observations about how the code/package is presented. So there are some droids like you describe; but these are not the ones you're looking for.

jiggawatts 6y ago

I can reformat whitespace, if I care to read through a piece of mis-aligned code, but that's not at all the criticism here. You missed my point entirely. This is like putting wooden wagon wheels on an F1 race car, and then complaining that people should appreciate the sleek lines of the car and stop commenting about the wheels. The code posted on GitHub is wasting the effort and the talent that went into this algorithm. It's optimising for brevity, something utterly useless, over utility, which is essential.

james412 6y ago
The race car in this instance would be the paper, it is well presented and assuming it survives scrutiny, eternal. One particular manifestation of it for one contemporary system might better be thought of as the garnish on the free salad bowl placed next to the car
- rudedogg 6y ago
  > The race car in this instance would be the paper, it is well presented and assuming it survives scrutiny, eternal. The parent is pointing out how the code is the only approachable version of the paper for many people. Making it read like mathematics renders it useless - since it only speaks to the audience that can already understand the paper. I fall into this category. If the code had reasonable variable names and comments I could probably figure out how it works. But since it reads like the wall of LaTeX on the linked page - I can't pierce it without learning a lot of mathematics. I think that says a lot about mathematic notation.

mikorym 6y ago

As mathematicians, we find solace in the void of the universe. We embrace it, we suppose the existence of the empty set, and we are forever saved from the apparent infinitude of assaults against the great potential of the human condition. Often, this kind of paradise is interrupted. Naive sets give way to ones with hyphenated names, and then some mathematicians prefer to branch before such hyphenated names, and in turn prolong the paradise that indeed continues to exist. Some mathematicians decide to focus on the branching point, call it Paradise in its own respect, and appreciate it for what it is. Not for what it is not. At the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century, a new kind of mathematician emerged that branched into an emerging area. This emerging area specialises in a form of logic popularly referred to as coding or programming. Very quickly, it turned out that this is a more social area of mathematics (though pure mathematics is indefinitely married to the concept of the mathematical seminar). However, it is implicitly social. The sociability is in the form of subtle comments, rants about Git conventions, and indeed about the use of whitespace. This convention somehow seems to have a purpose. That you can write a story through codes and comments, without resorting to the actual English language, but rather the through implementing the English Universal Psuedocode Nonconvention. And though there shall always be trouble in Paradise, the beauty of this strange new branch is that we can read it as prose—not unlike the great French mathematicians used to do—and have a paradise simply in the bliss of effort. Of course, of the dark art of machine code, and indeed of the strange validity of mathematics in general, we shall not say much, but simply read jokes about Yoda and try not to argue with a program that beyond all expectation continues to give the correct mapping to the codomain for all individual function inputs from its domain that we can enumerate in a reasonable amount of time.

james412 6y ago
This is possibly the most fabulously pompous faulty comparison I've ever read. To think that somewhere, someone might place the work of the common developer alongside that of a mathematician is hilarious. Sure, it's possible to say development has a mathematical basis, much as you could say operating a speedboat or a kite has. Our trade has about as much in common with mathematics as a convent has to a brothel
- 6y ago

starmftronajoll 6y ago

There is a name for this phenomenon, “bike-shedding.”

quadrifoliate 6y ago

I think the commenter went through the effort of trying to use this and faced obstacles while doing so. They have a much more valid reason to complain here than drive-by comments of the sort you're describing, which are superficial observations about how the code/package is presented. So there are some droids like you describe; but these are not the ones you're looking for.