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>One disadvantage is that it has to deal with a fair amount of arithmetic; there's lots of `/ float(n)` and `* self.rect.w + 0.5` and `self.size2/2 * (1 - (1 -

>One disadvantage is that it has to deal with a fair amount of arithmetic; there's lots of `/ float(n)` and `* self.rect.w + 0.5` and `self.size2/2 * (1 - (1 - age2)*2)` and the like, which I think reinforce a common misconception about computer programming: that you need to learn algebra and arithmetic in order to write programs, and that programs mostly deal with numbers. Is this really such a disadvantage? Algebra and arithmetic are hardly advanced subjects. Isn't it fair to insist that programmers know at least middle school math before they program?

kragen 15y ago
> Isn't it fair to insist that programmers know at least middle school math before they program? Certainly not! I started programming when I was 4, many years before I got to middle-school math. And there's a great deal of software in the world that has very little to do with algebra or arithmetic. It's easy to open up http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/sw/urscheme/compiler.scm.html http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/sw/urscheme/compiler.scm.ht..., for example, to a random page and see no arithmetic at all. The same would be true of https://github.com/evilstreak/markdown-js/blob/master/lib/markdown.js https://github.com/evilstreak/markdown-js/blob/master/lib/ma... if JS didn't require you to use arithmetic to iterate over arrays.