Listen I know we need a lot of variables in math. A single alphabet won’t due. So capital and lower case letters can be different variables. I can even roll with the idea that letters of the same case in different typefaces can be distinct— but, I still find the abusive use of C in Hoggs Mathematical Statistics a little extreme… we couldn’t get more distinct typefaces? How many students have cried because you did this, Hogg? (i otherwise love this textbook it’s so much fun) /math rant
@futurebird@projectgus I once attended a workshop by M K McKusick one of the key architects of BSD Unix. He told a story about people pestering him to increase the limit on filename length. His reply was “once you have put 1024 characters into the filename, consider maybe putting some data in the FILE!”.
Once you have used every letter in six alphabets, consider maybe TWO LETTER VARIABLES!
@futurebird@Unixbigot@projectgus My math brain doesn't understand this option, cause that's obviously just multiplying two different one letter variables. (Both shitposting and being honest at the same time, in reality I write complicated stuff out with whole words and lots of spacing, cause I find the symbols just as confusing.)
@futurebird@Unixbigot@projectgus While I am perfectly happy using long, descriptive variables most of the time, I default to single letter variables when looping.
@wakejagr@futurebird@projectgus same, I read a great toot the other day that said (paraphrased) a variable name’s length should be proportional to its scope.
@futurebird This is why, despite being pretty decent at math, I have avoided any advanced mathematics or physics since high school. It feels like gatekeeping to me, and my brain just recoils at the opacity of it all. Reading advanced materials on biology is totally accessible to anyone with a little bit of exposure. Reading advanced mathematics is like "here are a bunch of symbols you've seen before that are probably pronounced in ways you can't imagine and don't mean what you think they do"
@wcbdata This example is bad enough to be not accessible. And if you’re using text reading software? Lol too bad sucker! Even having less that perfectly sharp vision or any kind of dysgraphia no matter how mild makes it impenetrable. Come on!
@futurebird@wcbdata and even if you've got perfect vision, and aren't using text reading software, and everything else ... you still can't reliably differentiate the two in your handwritten notes. Using those two glyphs in even slightly adjacent contexts was a really stupid decision.
@wcbdata@futurebird
One of my Analysis professors would use the same letter in white, yellow, green or red at the blackboard to mean various things. I am colour blind.
@adriano It’s kind helpful they are all c since they go together… but we could use a less plain script font— except the common script font is already used for the set of complex numbers in the book so… IDK. I guess dude was like better break ‘em on the first page with a blizzard of Cs — it’s a wonder students take us seriously after that.
@futurebird@adriano
when I tutored college students, most of them had a hard time learning to view different typefaces as important in mathematical and physics texts. And in those days when hand-written notes were the norm, consistently reflecting typeface differences in handwritten notes was a real struggle for many.
@llewelly@futurebird@adriano even when you're taking notes on a laptop how on earth do you quickly type both those upper-case variants and keep them distinct from plain old C?
@DrHyde@futurebird@adriano
honestly I have no idea, but maybe that's because I learned to use computers before support of multiple fonts became normal.
@llewelly@futurebird@adriano I've set up my keyboard to include all the mathemagical symbols I commonly use as well as funky alphabets, so I can type rRρΡℝ, but if a new symbol comes up in a lecture it won't be configured yet. Argh! And even after I have added it, it's still going to be slow to type (Ρ is seven keystrokes - § shift g r r h o), and I have to remember that the new character is called §Citalic or §Cscript, and spot the subtle difference on the whiteboard correctly every time.
I spend some time programming my keyboard, though I wish I had legends with all the layers. Here are my last two set-ups. Currently on the blue one. Love how easy it is to reach everything.
I made the orthro from a pcb... though never quite got it doing everything I wanted correctly. Maybe I'll try again some day.
@futurebird@DrHyde@mina@llewelly@adriano
This set up is gorgeous ... 0_0
I love everything including the massive volume gage and the amazing green mouse. What is that mouse?
@futurebird@DrHyde@mina@llewelly@adriano
I’m curious about the 4/5/0/0 keys on the bottom row the orthro—are those ‘layer’ keys? (I’ve never used a keyboard of that kind)
@futurebird@DrHyde@mina@llewelly@adriano Oh my goodness. I was beginning to think I was the only one using an ortholinear design. I used to have quite a lot of hand pains from doing so much typing all the time and was convinced to switch to Dvorak and try the TypeMatrix in part because of its hardware Dvorak switch (as a gamer, software-controlled layouts are a problem) then when that eventually died I built a keyboard on a generic Idobo 75 clone. Haven't ever looked back.
@adriano@futurebird It reminds me of how programmers on my team and in general will shorten variable names to the point if incomprehensibility for the sake of brevity (I'm always flagging this in my code reviews, "Please spell out the full word").
Another similarly related habit is everyone trying to cram as much code into a single line with no breaks. I told a coworker once that it always seems like people are acting like there's a nationwide shortage of carriage returns or something 😅
@adriano@zalasur@futurebird Hey, I only relaxed 80 columns this year, for my own code, and even then only to 88 columns. (No, I'm not a Nazi, it's the default in black and ruff.)
The reason is simple - it makes my code more readable and allows me to see more of it on a screen.
I worked for a company that used 120 once, and only a couple of percent of the lines used over 110 columns, and perhaps 5% over 100. All that whitespace, just wasted!
@TomSwirly@adriano@futurebird We use 120 around here. I did (accidentally) use 80 characters until I realized my IDE was misconfigured. I wasn't a huge fan. 120 seems like a good compromise between having proper line breakage in your code but not to the point of absurdity. This might be in part due to my insistence of using full words in my variable names however 😉
I used to want to start a rumor (on Facebook, of course) that the internet is running out of ASCII characters and that people would need to start saving old emails to recycle letters, words and punctuation for future Facebook posts.
@angiebaby@zalasur@adriano@futurebird
good thing they invented unicode, which has a lot more characters, saving the internet from disaster. But what will we do when unicode runs out in 2038?
@zalasur@adriano@futurebird This is why I am falling in love with the Golang philosophy. Go is a super simple language that makes you type more because it is simple. On the other hand, programmer intent is always more evident in idiomatic Go than if you are writing in a language like C# or Java. (Don't get me started on JavaScript).
"Another similarly related habit is everyone trying to cram as much code into a single line with no breaks."
This particular type of thing got incredibly bad in the JavaScript world after the introduction of arrow functions and implicit returns. The sheer number of unreadable higher order functions that resulted has broken the brain of many a poor web dev.
@bcdavid@adriano@futurebird That and ternary operators. When did it become a thing to try to stuff as much application logic into a single ternary statement as humanly possible?
@zalasur@adriano@futurebird In a similar vein, it drives me batty when I see code that uses logical operators as a form of "if" statement. Like isDefined && fn() instead of if (is defined) { fn() }. Just unnecessary obtuse.
@bcdavid@zalasur@futurebird I don't consider that "unnecessarily obtuse", I consider that malice. But yeah. Every programming book, in their "operator precedence" section says "in doubt, use parentheses" and this is the opposite
@adriano@bcdavid@futurebird In general I agree with this but I do have exceptions (in JavaScript): one, the null coalescing operator "??". As someone who has to deal with unreliable inputs this one has been a godsend.
That and the optional chaining operator "?."
It beats endlessly nested if/then blocks in the code by a mile.
I don't think it's a question of the usefulness of the operator, the operators are super useful. It's when you start using them for evil that it becomes a problem.
It sometimes feels like they were intentionally trying to create a puzzle. It's not the Sunday crossword.
It can make it really difficult to even know if you're in the right place if you don't give things meaningful names. And if you can't relate to that because you only use much less annoying technology, then I envy you.
Please excuse the slight digression. It's apparently a tough wound to heal.
@zalasur@adriano@futurebird
C. 1998 I read an article on ZDNet about how to cut down web page size by doing things like using single-character folder & file names, omitting quotes on attributes, omitting closing tags, & leaving out all line breaks.
Just for giggles (OK, to validate my initial reaction) I tested this on one of my site's pages & found the savings were uttlerly swamped by optimization of a single small JPEG. Meanwhile I'd made that code incomprehensible.
@zalasur@adriano@futurebird
TBF minimizers didn't exist yet, & typical JavaScript files were tiny in those days. But yeah since you're about to ask the tips extended to using every possible technique to manually minimize your JS files, too.
@adriano@FeralRobots@futurebird It looks like the RFC that introduced server side compression in http wasn't published until 1999. So I guess there was some utility in manually minimizing js files back in 1998. But as it was noted earlier, you had much greater gains from better image/video compression than anything to do with text file transmission.
@adriano@futurebird imagine a programming language where what font you used made a difference. Like if you said something was a string by putting it in Times New Roman.
Of course, this means you would pretty much have to use tabs not spaces. This is a plus imho
@futurebird@nev@adriano
I think in the original ALGOL, the keywords were defined to be bold, because it was more a language for describing algorithms in academic papers than something a compiler could handle (yet).
It predates the invention of syntax highlighting; it predates the invention of text editors.
@mattflor@nev@adriano Including the “equation editor” hateful thing that it is. (I’m an expert user of that kludge of a formatting software and I have deep emotional issues about how I feel about the equation editor and what it has done to my life.)
I’ve been trying to get K12 teachers to learn LaTeX all my life and it’s like pulling teeth out of the mouth of a dog that’s trying to bite you… with a spoon covered in vaseline… in the dark … in the trunk of a NYC taxicab… doing a getaway run from a bank heist.
It takes like 12 min to learn LaTeX IDK what the big deal is. “I need to learn LaTeX” they say. “ok let’s do it right now at the bus stop” I say. Then the excuses start. My students can all use it and I just gave them an example to modify.
I will admit it is one of those “12 min to learn, a life time to master’ things — I’ve gotten into coding randomized diagrams with graphs and matching answer keys— the sky’s the limit! but it’s a markup it’s supposed to be pretty easy to follow.
@futurebird@degreesOfFreedom@mina@mattflor@nev@adriano I wrote my dissertation in LaTeX back in 2005 and NOBODY in my program knew what it was or why I was using it (MS Word failed me badly enough to motivate the switch).
@futurebird
I actually tried to learn LaTeX once, but it's like Vim : I got stuck at the step "choose which plugin to use among these fancy ones with weird names who claim to do nearly the same thing but not exactly"...
@futurebird@degreesOfFreedom@mina@mattflor@nev@adriano I used to use LaTeX directly for things, until I got fed up with it and wrote a simple compiler to transform a sort of bare bones markdown into LaTeX (and later HTML as well). That works for most of my use cases.
@futurebird@degreesOfFreedom@mina@mattflor@nev@adriano It took a few minutes to learn how to format the equations I needed. It took several years for someone to let me know I didn't know how to pronounce it correctly.
@futurebird@degreesOfFreedom@mina@mattflor@nev@adriano Exactly. And that example can encode all the fiddly bits related to the correct presentation of the document. At work, we’ve found that a self hosted instance of Overleaf really helps with getting folks on board.
@futurebird@degreesOfFreedom@mina@mattflor@nev@adriano when I tried to learn LaTeX the first thing I tried to do was recreate the format I’d been using, which meant having headers and footers; trying to find out how to make headers and footers in LaTeX turned up about a dozen options, none of which worked
Not sure how many hours I wasted on that, but it was enough that I haven’t tried again
@futurebird in programming, we have this magical technology called multi character variable names. I’m not sure why math people haven’t caught up yet :)
@futurebird I made my physics class cry in anguish once when I started teaching about the index of refraction (n = c/v) the same time they were learning about concentration in chemistry (c = n/V) 😄
I might have been trying to break them of the “formula triangle” habit…
@futurebird That's horrid. Surely they could've come up with different letters? Even in math literature, authors use variations on a letter variable by adding other letters and signifiers. c', for instance, as the tangent or derivative of c. Unicode is full of clear variations. Why did they have to vary those shapes that slightly? People suffering from low vision (like me) or low attention levels (like my kid) won't notice any difference!
@futurebird Maybe I'm misreading it, but I think there are only three distinct C’s in that snippet — one lowercase and two uppercase in different fonts. But of course the fact that this is even a question proves your point!
I read an information theory paper in grad school that used a super fancy script font, kind of the opposite extreme of the one used here. It was so fancy that I found it impossible to tell the I, J, and K apart without a key!
@futurebird
there are only two acceptable kinds of variable names:
whole words which have a consistent, memorable relationship to the meaning of the variable
multiple whole words separated by either underscores or hyphens. (camelCase is a tolerable kludge for badly designed languages which fail to support underscores or hyphens in variable names )
Abbreviations of any kind, and certainly not single letters, are not on the list.
@galoisghost@futurebird This reminds me of the professor at university who used Hebrew letters when he ran out of latin ones. The pattern detection part of my brain had multiple breakdowns because of that guy. ;)
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