On 29 September 2012 22:57, Alan Gauld <alan.ga...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> On 29/09/12 11:42, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > >> On 29/09/12 19:16, Alan Gauld wrote: >> > Totally agree. > My point is that we should not choose short names just to keep an > expression on a single line. The evidence suggests that the advantages of > longer names outweigh the advantage of a single line. But in the cases here > where single letters evidently have expressive power in their own right the > familiar term is preferable over a longer descriptive name. > > Of course, care is needed when splitting an expression over multi lines > to keep the readability so if the terms can be naturally split by operator > then that's the place to split them. But this is the same in written math > too. (Most of the equations I remember reading from my quantum mechanics > days were split over at least 3 lines... trying to force them into a single > line would not have made them any more palatable!) I wouldn't advocate forcing an equation onto a single line if it doesn't fit on a single line. However, I'm sure that the equations you're refering to would have already been using lots of symbols described by very succinct single-greek/latin-letters and other simple glyphs. Naturally, these equations would not be meaningful to someone lacking prior experience of quantum mechanics. Now imagine replacing each of those single letter symbols with English underscore-separated words so instead of letter capital psi you would have 'time_dependent_wave_function' and instead of hbar you would have 'planks_constant_over_twopi' and so on. Your equation would go from three lines to thirty and noone would be able to understand it *even if they were familiar with the subject*. Oscar
_______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
