Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Fold a Julia Fractal

acko.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 31 posts

Re: How to Fold a Julia Fractal

#11

Post by skeuomorf »

tomn wrote: post #10
skeuomorf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nitpick: He not they . [0] Steven is also the person who developed MathBox. [1] [0] http://acko.net/about/ [1] http://acko.net/blog/making-mathbox/

Thanks for adding more information, but that's a perfectly cromulent use of the word they.

Actually I think the correctness of using a singular they is disputed but I am not a grammaticist, however the word cromulent which you used is not even a real word but I didn't mention the correction to do all that nitpicking, I just thought since the person's information is accessible, it'd be nice to refer to him correctly that's all.

Re: How to Fold a Julia Fractal

#13

Post by pavel_lishin »

skeuomorf wrote: post #11
tomn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for adding more information, but that's a perfectly cromulent use of the word they.

Actually I think the correctness of using a singular they is disputed but I am not a grammaticist, however the word cromulent which you used is not even a real word but I didn't mention the correction to do all that nitpicking, I just thought since the person's information is accessible, it'd be nice to refer to him correctly that's all.

It's become a real word by virtue of its use.

Re: How to Fold a Julia Fractal

#18

Post by drdeca »

skeuomorf wrote: post #11
tomn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for adding more information, but that's a perfectly cromulent use of the word they.

Actually I think the correctness of using a singular they is disputed but I am not a grammaticist, however the word cromulent which you used is not even a real word but I didn't mention the correction to do all that nitpicking, I just thought since the person's information is accessible, it'd be nice to refer to him correctly that's all.

"Correctness" of word choice is determined by usage. I prefer a consensus where "they" is accepted as being possibly singular, so when I have no reason not to, I choose to treat it as being a correct usage.

I also tend to use it sometimes despite knowing the gender of the person I am referring to. This seems reasonable to me, because I don't see any reason why it is important to always specify the person's gender, when I don't need to specify who the person is, and doing so allows me to refer to someone without specifying a gender, should any situation occur where that would be useful, without anyone commenting on my word choice, because I would already be in the habit of sometimes leaving it out.

Re: How to Fold a Julia Fractal

#19

Post by rosstex »

skybrian wrote: post #17

Nice to read this again. Not nearly as pretty, but if you'd like to read more about complex numbers, here's a slide show I put together a while back: How to explain Euler's identity using triangles and spirals https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1oMNjkDp-LieSGnZEwNpc...

That's awesome, thank you! It really did "connect the dots" in my head :)

Re: How to Fold a Julia Fractal

#20

Post by pdkl95 »

skeuomorf wrote: post #11
tomn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for adding more information, but that's a perfectly cromulent use of the word they.

Actually I think the correctness of using a singular they is disputed but I am not a grammaticist, however the word cromulent which you used is not even a real word but I didn't mention the correction to do all that nitpicking, I just thought since the person's information is accessible, it'd be nice to refer to him correctly that's all.

> the word cromulent ... is not even a real word

Only to a prescriptivist[1] trying to keep the language static. "Cromulent" is slowly making its way into descriptivist[1] dictionaries and is recognized about as often as any other new word, so it just as much a "real" word as other new words ("email", "google" (transitive verb), "truthiness").

> the correctness of using a singular they

The alternative is gendered pronouns which have several problems[2].

/* I'm not trying to nitpick your post; I just thought these two Tom Scott clips were fun and relevant to these grammar issues. */

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qT8ZYewYEY

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46ehrFk-gLk

Post reply on HN