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Cake day: August 4th, 2023

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  • All junior devs should read OCs comment and really think about this.

    The issue is whether is_number() is performing a semantic language matter or checking whether the text input can be converted by the program to a number type.

    The former case - the semantic language test - is useful for chat based interactions, analysis of text (and ancient text - I love the cuneiform btw) and similar. In this mode, some applications don’t even have to be able to convert the text into eg binary (a ‘gazillion’ of something is quantifying it, but vaguely)

    The latter case (validating input) is useful where the input is controlled and users are supposed to enter numbers using a limited part of a standard keyboard. Clay tablets and triangular sticks are strictly excluded from this interface.

    Another example might be is_address(). Which of these are addresses? ‘10 Downing Street, London’, ‘193.168.1.1’, ‘Gettysberg’, ‘Sir/Madam’.

    To me this highlights that code is a lot less reusable between different projects/apps than it at first appears.




  • modeler@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzCalculus made easy
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    5 months ago

    I must not use jargon.

    Jargon is the mind-killer.

    Jargon is the little-death that brings total confusion. I will face the jargon. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the jargon has gone there will be clarity. Only sense will remain.




  • modeler@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzputs hair on your chest
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    7 months ago

    Exactly!

    While the continents might look like they fit together, and the rock types and ages and fossils match at key points all down the coasts from Canada/Scotland all the way down to South America and South Africa, how on earth (sorry) would you explain how the continents are thousands of miles apart?

    One theory posited the earth spinning so fast centrifugal forces ripped ehat would become the moon out of the Pacific, sucking Eurasia and America into the void.

    That’s a Randall Monroe WhatIf if ever I saw one. Think of the energy involved! All life on earth would be extinct.

    So these theories were laughed out of scientific court. Until Vine and Matthew’s seminal paper on magnetic stripes being mirrored over the mid ocean ridge showed there had to be something forcing the plates apart.



  • Maths and reality are different. Very different. Reality can be explored empirically while maths is logic not empirical. We can never say we are 100% sure about the rules/laws we have discovered about our reality, but we can say for sure that a maths theorem is true or false.

    Maths is a set of self-consistent tools that can be used to predict what happens in reality. The mathematical description of reality is an estimate, contains countless assumptions and inaccuracies about where things are and what properties they have. In fact in quantum physics, we literally can’t know momentum and location at the same time.

    Maths can describe (or I should say, approximate) realities that don’t exist.

    Because maths and reality are different domains, we can know different things about them using different approaches.