I agree. Way back when I learned the FT, I happened to be taking a signals and statistics class in the same semester and rationalizing the Fourier transform as

I agree. Way back when I learned the FT, I happened to be taking a signals and statistics class in the same semester and rationalizing the Fourier transform as the correlation between a function and a sinusoid was an incredibly natural mental leap and didn’t require me to hold much additional knowledge in my head