Q&A highlight
Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago
Ask HN: Why aren’t leaky abstractions considered bad practice in mathematics?
mathematicssoftware engineeringabstraction
Ask HN: Why aren’t leaky abstractions considered bad practice in mathematics?
No synthesized answer yet. Check the discussion below.
Discussion (7 comments)
Showing 7 comments
Can you point out some examples? Or are these hypothetical leaky abstractions?
If math did a good job with encapsulation, you would be able to have an applied math class with no math algorithms.
That's not an example. Can you please provide an actual example of a leaky abstraction instead of merely asserting their existence.
Can you teach applied linear algebra without teaching the algorithms (e.g., Gaussian elimination)?
3 months ago
Are you not interested in discussing this?
3 months ago
Does the presence of an algorithm mean that there is a leaky abstraction?
And if that's all it takes (I'm not agreeing with you, I think this is a poorly considered heuristic), then isn't software engineering chock-full of leaky abstractions? So it's at least as bad as mathematics, and likely worse by your own measure of what makes for leaky abstractions.
3 months ago
Abstraction is a disadvantage in matters concerning empiricism. This is as true for computers that hide their algorithms as mathematicians who won't show their math.