A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
As a software developer, the less ambiguous your notation is, the better it is for everyone involved. Not only will I use brackets, I'll split my expression into multiple rows and use tabs to make it as readable as humanly possible. And maybe throw a comment or 2 if there's still some black magic involved
As a professor said, most programming languages don't care about readability and whitespace. But we care because humans need it to parse meaning. Thus, write code for people, not for the machine. Always assume that someone with no knowledge of the context will have to debug it, and be kind to them. Because that someone might be you in six months when you have completely forgotten how the code works.
Exactly. You read code way more times than you write it, so it makes all the sense in the world to prioritize readability.
Source code is for humans, then the compiler turns it into code for machines.
Python forcing end of line and tabs kinda does. Add Black auto-formatter and it's pretty good.
Yep, if you're writing code for a machine, just do it in binary to save compilation time (/s just in case). Also, you in six months will indeed be someone with no knowledge of the context. And every piece of code you think you write for one-time use is guaranteed to be reused every day for the next 5 years
And every piece of code you think you write for one-time use is guaranteed to be reused every day for the next 5 years
This. Always be kind to your future self.
I had someone submit a pull request recently that, in addition to their actual changes, also removed every single parenthesis that wasn't strictly necessary in a file full of 3D math functions. I know it was probably the fault of an autoformatter they used, but I was still the most offended I've ever been at a pull request.
Autoformatter? More like obfuscator
Also works if you dont trust yourself with correctly ordering your operations.
I, my head, shake.
Also known as: Japanese speaker
(I used(LISP)one time(and it(permanently))changed the way I (program(computers)))
This is why every calculator should be a RPN calculator.
I still have my HP 48 series calculator. It's a sturdy beast.
(‿!‿) (‿O‿)
( . ) ( . ) ( . Y . )
Improved readability is always good
My calculator says -2² = -4, so yeah...
Isn't the "-" order of operations the same as a multiply ? I think I learned powers take priority over the "-" so your calculator would be right.
But either way if it can cause confusion you should use parentheses.
I feel this in my bones
I've never seen a calculator that had bracket keys but didn't implement the conventional order of operations.
But anyway, I'm on Team RPN.
https://plus.maths.org/content/pemdas-paradox
Even two casios won't give you the same answer:
https://plus.maths.org/content/sites/plus.maths.org/files/articles/2019/pemdas/calculators.png
I recall that there is a myriad of memes of the form 'what is 4-2*3' under which there is always a never ending discussion of confidently incorrect dumbasses denying the existence of the multiplication before addition rule.
So your suspicion is at least not unreasonable
