I talk about magic numbers from an abstract, theoretical perspective. from that perspective it's not relevant that you can't generalize an equation solver. but

I talk about magic numbers from an abstract, theoretical perspective. from that perspective it's not relevant that you can't generalize an equation solver. but would bet that if it was possible then there would be no numbers except for 0 and 1. --- you could also think of it this way. a generalized equation solver would necessarily derive the solution in a complete fashion. for someone analyzing the code it would be come clear what's going on. your specialized equation solver otoh just has some "magical" solution in there.