Quaternions are "non-intuitive" for people without a math background. If you're a professional software engineer, you should have a CS degree which includes a m

Quaternions are "non-intuitive" for people without a math background. If you're a professional software engineer, you should have a CS degree which includes a math background. I found 4x4 matrixes trivial in a computer graphics course because they were taught with proper examples in terms as they applied to camera and transformations. We re-implemented a subset of the OpenGL pipeline. If you don't understand the math, you can't hope to possibly understand how a 3D rendering pipeline works. Cartesian <--> polar coordinate transformations applied to the real world must be done carefully because of the magnified error potential at boundary conditions. Again, heavy mathematics as a foundation are necessary to avoid major harm. Honestly, I don't think anyone except Professional Engineers should be allowed to work on critical flight control software. Boeing has been farming out software development to overseas contractors because they're cheaper ($9/hr), not because they're better.