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Comment by jnsie | Hacker News Reader

I haven't thought about Bézier Curves since my undergrad a long time ago. I distinctly remember wondering at the time why so many lecturers added extra hurdles (i.e. the need to understand the intricacies of Bézier Curves) in their assignments rather than letting students focus on the computer science/programming concepts they were meant to be learning.

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Because if you have the time and opportunity to study something in depth, then it should be taken imo.

If I just want to get a working product I only need the basic algorithm, but understanding "all" of it is never wrong

What concepts were you “meant” to be learning? Doesn’t the content of the lectures give you a clue as to the educators’ intent? Are you aware that Bézier curves cover many fundamental CS topics, such as recursion, function evaluation, function approximation, numerical analysis, linear algebra, root finding, and more? Do you know they’re used heavily in a lot of software you use? (Browsers, font rendering, maps, nonlinear numerical libraries, UI frameworks, games, etc.)

Same here. Bézout also was another mysterious killer.

Concepts coming from french mathematicians were made more obscure just to raise the bar. The irony is, in french Universities.

I recall a student who had enough failing the computer based assessments. He kindly asked the lead lecturer to show us all that he, at least, could land a perfect score. He made the mistake to try, got 8 points out of 20.

He admitted it wasn't easy when not prepared, and moved on with the next mined field.

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