Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

To be fair, mixing math and display logic in a giant function like that is a bad idea in any programming language.

But the frightening flexibility of the Mathematica language certainly doesn't help.



I think that is the main reason behind the comments here. The mathematica language takes some using too, and its syntax definitely is on the weird side of functional. However, do you expect this kind of complex example to be a paragon of clarity in any language? Picture what this would look like in haskell, ipython, R or javascript. Do you think "oh yes of course I will totally be able to do that after 2 hours using the platform"?

As to the question if you have to be a developer to write that kind of code, of course not, but you do have to be an experienced developer on that platform. I for one really like Mathematica despite the closed source and the offputting look of the source code, exactly because you can do the sort of magic shown here and actually get there pretty quickly.

Now, I hope that didn't sound too defensive :)


The first five times I read this comment I read it as:

"To be fair, mixing meth and display logic in a giant function like that is a bad idea in any programming language."

Frankly, I agree with either statement.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: