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My problem with computer science pseudocode

beauty-of-imagination.blogspot.co.uk

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Re: My problem with computer science pseudocode

#11

Post by xanmas »

Xcelerate wrote: post #5

This is a general problem with academic books/papers. Authors rarely focus on making their work as easily understandable as possible. Instead, the goal almost seems to be the opposite -- how obscure sounding can I make this paper (so that I appear really smart) while still maintaining correctness? It's very frustrating. We get it: you're smart. Now quit using words like "complecting" and quit using elliptic modular f…

Speaking as the author of multiple academic articles (theoretical physics), I would fundamentally disagree with your assessment. We usually are trying our absolute hardest to communicate a new advance in the field in anywhere from 4-8 pages, references and introduction included. We're essentially trying to sum up (in my case) 2 years of work in as short of a space as possible so, to do this, we assume that the reader has a working knowledge of the foundations of the field but provide references to this. The references serve to 1) provide evidence for unoriginal claims that you make (every sentence that communications an unoriginal result should have a citation) and 2) allow those who are unfamiliar with the field to pick up the basics as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, some of our prose is a bit obtuse because it's reasonably common for scientists to blow off their humanities courses because they're not science -- not realizing that most of our career will depend on the quality of our writing. You shouldn't confuse our incompetence with malice though.

Re: My problem with computer science pseudocode

#12

Post by Xcelerate »

xanmas wrote: post #11
Xcelerate wrote: post #5

This is a general problem with academic books/papers. Authors rarely focus on making their work as easily understandable as possible. Instead, the goal almost seems to be the opposite -- how obscure sounding can I make this paper (so that I appear really smart) while still maintaining correctness? It's very frustrating. We get it: you're smart. Now quit using words like "complecting" and quit using elliptic modular f…

Speaking as the author of multiple academic articles (theoretical physics), I would fundamentally disagree with your assessment. We usually are trying our absolute hardest to communicate a new advance in the field in anywhere from 4-8 pages, references and introduction included. We're essentially trying to sum up (in my case) 2 years of work in as short of a space as possible so, to do this, we assume that the reader…

Sorry, I guess a few bad experiences lately have given me in to hyperbole. I do research myself and at least with some of the papers I've read recently, I've noticed questionable vocabulary choices. I can't think of a reason for using certain obtuse words when a simpler word would be much clearer, but as you say, perhaps it is just the word that the researcher thought most apt.

Re: My problem with computer science pseudocode

#14

Post by ObnoxiousJul »

jmaicher wrote: post #10

Unfortunately I can't see the pseudo code you are criticizing. But I have a degree in CS and I'm familiar with the notion of pseudo code and the way it's usually written in academic papers. I agree with you that the way code is written matters a lot in practice. But in academic papers, usually the idea, the runtime and the correctness of algorithms have a higher priority than implementation details. Sure, you can wri…

I noticed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_heap had a (slighlty) improved version of the binary Heap copy pasted from the same book.

Re: My problem with computer science pseudocode

#17

Post by comex »

ralfn wrote: post #16
comex wrote: post #15

Since Google Books seems to not always want to display the code, here's a screenshot: http://imgur.com/q7TII

That no longer works either. Dropbox is not a good way to share pics to potentially large groups of people. Just use imgur.

Fixed, thanks.

Re: My problem with computer science pseudocode

#18

Post by scott_s »

Xcelerate wrote: post #12
xanmas wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as the author of multiple academic articles (theoretical physics), I would fundamentally disagree with your assessment. We usually are trying our absolute hardest to communicate a new advance in the field in anywhere from 4-8 pages, references and introduction included. We're essentially trying to sum up (in my case) 2 years of work in as short of a space as possible so, to do this, we assume that the reader…

Sorry, I guess a few bad experiences lately have given me in to hyperbole. I do research myself and at least with some of the papers I've read recently, I've noticed questionable vocabulary choices. I can't think of a reason for using certain obtuse words when a simpler word would be much clearer, but as you say, perhaps it is just the word that the researcher thought most apt.

One's ability to use simple words to describe complex concepts is a function of not just understanding of the concept itself, but also mastery of the language. Consider that many (most?) of the research papers you've read were written by non-native English speakers. In my experience, people who are native English speakers have an easier time being both precise and concise.

Re: My problem with computer science pseudocode

#19

Post by xanmas »

Xcelerate wrote: post #12
xanmas wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as the author of multiple academic articles (theoretical physics), I would fundamentally disagree with your assessment. We usually are trying our absolute hardest to communicate a new advance in the field in anywhere from 4-8 pages, references and introduction included. We're essentially trying to sum up (in my case) 2 years of work in as short of a space as possible so, to do this, we assume that the reader…

Sorry, I guess a few bad experiences lately have given me in to hyperbole. I do research myself and at least with some of the papers I've read recently, I've noticed questionable vocabulary choices. I can't think of a reason for using certain obtuse words when a simpler word would be much clearer, but as you say, perhaps it is just the word that the researcher thought most apt.

Don't worry, I felt the same when I was starting to read papers as a graduate student but I came to realize that in cases like the one where you mentioned elliptic modular forms being introduced to vastly overcomplicate something, it was usually done to make something true in a far more general set of space.

For me in physics? That came about when I started reading papers where people were doing stuff with differential geometry on manifolds. I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out why people would talk about a wedge product when a cross product would have sufficed until about 6 months later when it clicked that doing something in a coordinate agnostic framework allows you to prove things for any coordinate system and create general formulas that just need a few things "plugged in."

I'm not going to pretend to know that that's why elliptical modular forms are being used in your context but everytime something has seemed needlessly overcomplicated, I've come to realize after some thinking that it's done with a view towards generality.

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