Comment by jiggawatts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jiggawatts | Hacker News Reader

I tried to get the Mathematica version to do something useful, but in typical "mathematician minimalist style" it squeezed everything into one enormous, terse, but useless blob. The code on GitHub works as a demo only. Even after trying a few different syntax variations for about twenty minutes, I couldn't figure out how to feed the "ILT" function something that would spit out what I expect.

In case the original authors ever come across this article: There is a standard for writing Mathematica modules! Please take a look at some other modules available online, and see how they split the code into small, reusable functions.

Even the name is too short. In the Mathematica naming convention it should be called "InverseLaplaceTransformCME[...]" or something like that. Ideally, use the same calling convention as the built-in function, documented here: https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/InverseLaplaceTra...

This would allow your function to be a drop-in replacement, allowing users to switch between the symbolic and approximate versions trivially.

You may even want to contact Wolfram Research! They just implemented a new "Asymptotics" module that includes approximate inverse Laplace transforms as a feature. See: https://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/Asymptotics.htm...

They might add your approach into the 12.2 release, which would mean that many thousands of people could automatically benefit from your hard work!

The researchers already did the hard work! Programmers should see this as an opportunity to thank scientists and develop their own polished version. We shouldn't expect to receive everything ready to import directly into our projects.

There must be some name for the effect seen here so regularly, which might best be described as the contrast in magnitudes of something being posted to the comments made about it.

In this case we have a fundamental contribution to mathematics that is succinctly captured in 252 words, producing a 209 word complaint essentially about whitespace.

I can reformat whitespace, if I care to read through a piece of mis-aligned code, but that's not at all the criticism here. You missed my point entirely.

This is like putting wooden wagon wheels on an F1 race car, and then complaining that people should appreciate the sleek lines of the car and stop commenting about the wheels.

The code posted on GitHub is wasting the effort and the talent that went into this algorithm. It's optimising for brevity, something utterly useless, over utility, which is essential.

The race car in this instance would be the paper, it is well presented and assuming it survives scrutiny, eternal. One particular manifestation of it for one contemporary system might better be thought of as the garnish on the free salad bowl placed next to the car

> The race car in this instance would be the paper, it is well presented and assuming it survives scrutiny, eternal.

The parent is pointing out how the code is the only approachable version of the paper for many people. Making it read like mathematics renders it useless - since it only speaks to the audience that can already understand the paper.

I fall into this category. If the code had reasonable variable names and comments I could probably figure out how it works. But since it reads like the wall of LaTeX on the linked page - I can't pierce it without learning a lot of mathematics. I think that says a lot about mathematic notation.

As mathematicians, we find solace in the void of the universe. We embrace it, we suppose the existence of the empty set, and we are forever saved from the apparent infinitude of assaults against the great potential of the human condition.

Often, this kind of paradise is interrupted. Naive sets give way to ones with hyphenated names, and then some mathematicians prefer to branch before such hyphenated names, and in turn prolong the paradise that indeed continues to exist.

Some mathematicians decide to focus on the branching point, call it Paradise in its own respect, and appreciate it for what it is. Not for what it is not.

At the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century, a new kind of mathematician emerged that branched into an emerging area. This emerging area specialises in a form of logic popularly referred to as coding or programming. Very quickly, it turned out that this is a more social area of mathematics (though pure mathematics is indefinitely married to the concept of the mathematical seminar).

However, it is implicitly social. The sociability is in the form of subtle comments, rants about Git conventions, and indeed about the use of whitespace.

This convention somehow seems to have a purpose. That you can write a story through codes and comments, without resorting to the actual English language, but rather the through implementing the English Universal Psuedocode Nonconvention.

And though there shall always be trouble in Paradise, the beauty of this strange new branch is that we can read it as prose—not unlike the great French mathematicians used to do—and have a paradise simply in the bliss of effort.

Of course, of the dark art of machine code, and indeed of the strange validity of mathematics in general, we shall not say much, but simply read jokes about Yoda and try not to argue with a program that beyond all expectation continues to give the correct mapping to the codomain for all individual function inputs from its domain that we can enumerate in a reasonable amount of time.

This is possibly the most fabulously pompous faulty comparison I've ever read. To think that somewhere, someone might place the work of the common developer alongside that of a mathematician is hilarious. Sure, it's possible to say development has a mathematical basis, much as you could say operating a speedboat or a kite has. Our trade has about as much in common with mathematics as a convent has to a brothel

A nunnery is a nunnery is a nunnery.

There is a name for this phenomenon, “bike-shedding.”

I think the commenter went through the effort of trying to use this and faced obstacles while doing so. They have a much more valid reason to complain here than drive-by comments of the sort you're describing, which are superficial observations about how the code/package is presented.

So there are some droids like you describe; but these are not the ones you're looking for.

Would you be able to provide one or two examples of what you consider well written Mathematica modules? Or provide a reference on Mathematica programming that you liked?

working code can always be refactored to meet conventions

> in typical "mathematician minimalist style" it squeezed everything into one enormous, terse, but useless blob

You're complaining that it's both too minimalist and too enormous?

Imagine War and Peace, but every word is abbreviated like it's written in shorthand.

Fair enough. But also not a problem if the intended recipient is well-versed in that shorthand.

An important difference is that a novel doesn't typically require a specialized skillset, but a mathematical development does.

Naming functions with acronyms instead of names is totally unrelated to familiarity with math notation. You don't even use acronyms in papers, you use greek symbols and letters written in special fonts.

Yeah, and compact acronyms is the closest a lot of programming languages will let you get.

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