I like the content, but wish the undercutting humor was given a bit more thought before publishing.
Why the need for a competitive division of mathematics and programming?
What the op did was math, and I’m unsure why the need to think of it as something else?
> I suspect a more maths-oriented person would go through this very differently. Maybe they’d try to find an elegant analytical proof, without the aid of a dumb number-crunching machine brute-forcing its way through. Or they’d try to generalize the problem to different number of digits, or different number bases.
Why drag “brute forcing” like this? Why drag yourself like this
I meant the post to be more of a personal story. Of what i, personally, wanted to explore when learning about the Kaprekar constant, and of realizing that my interest is more on the "programming" side of things (programming languages, "readable" code, etc) than the more pure maths side.
But i can see how the tone could make it seem that was a competitive division of sorts, especially the title. I'll try to take it into account for (hopefully) future posts.
Well while I have you, the message I feel I failed to adhere to in my comment was my interest in letting you, or others who follow their passion in math and programming, know that what you are doing is in fact “real” math!
Keep it up!
Your post made me click through a bunch of links in it. Thank you, but give me back that hour! ;P
Better yet, I’ll trade you a different rabbit hole.
I appreciate the clarification, as well as the initial comment TBH. And i agree actually, that doing this kind of computer-assisted search is indeed "real" maths, or at least a part of it; a useful tool. I think a comment on Lobsters[1] expressed this sentiment better than i could:
> It is, but it’s also a bit unsatisfactory, no? A lot of the time the particular statement is less important than the way it was obtained—why or how is something works seems much more relevant to me than the binary question of whether it is true. A novel result more often than not also uses novel proof techniques, which may then be adapted to other problems. One may learn a lot more from the proof than even from the applications of the result.
> (Perhaps the author does has a point about the different mindsets :))
And thanks for the video recommendation. Added to my watchlist :)
Why the need for a competitive division of mathematics and programming?
What the op did was math, and I’m unsure why the need to think of it as something else?
> I suspect a more maths-oriented person would go through this very differently. Maybe they’d try to find an elegant analytical proof, without the aid of a dumb number-crunching machine brute-forcing its way through. Or they’d try to generalize the problem to different number of digits, or different number bases.
Why drag “brute forcing” like this? Why drag yourself like this
> I don’t really know.
Exactly, so why imagine a divisive assumption?