4 ms·
I'd love to see this idea expanded into various branches of math and science and various other languages. I remember the moment I learned that phi and theta we
by __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
I'd love to see this idea expanded into various branches of math and science and various other languages.
I remember the moment I learned that phi and theta were used by both mathematicians and physicists for rotational components of a spherical coordinates system, but that their roles are switched:
math: theta=polar phi=azimuthal
physics: phi=polar theta=azimuthal
It felt like there should be a place for that kind of knowledge. I'm all for violating convention with purpose, but so often we violate convention because we don't know any better. That's just needless complexity.
- taeric 2y agoHave you gone down the rabbit hole of why the y coordinate is inverted in many computer graphics? :D
- retromagik 2y agoIt's because CRT displays draw from top to bottom, right?
- taeric 2y agoLargely that seems to be the consensus, yes.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gweinberg 2y agoI think it's more because printers (used to) print going down. I don;t see why it would matter in the least that crts draw the top first, if that is indeed the case. But for old printers where the paper is continuous, down is "forward" and there is no going back.
- taeric 2y agoI think the printers and the old monitors reason are basically the same? Scanlines used to be a "you have now to set this pixel, if you missed it, you get next scan." It is an oddly accurate mental model to think of the screen as printing an image every scan.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoMy first programming language was Ti-BASIC where screen coordinates worked with y=0 at the top. A natural choice given how the OS worked. I used it to cheat on math tests, so the two never felt like separate worlds to me and I understood the reason for both. As for phi and theta, it just seems so arbitrary.