ezyang’s blog

the arc of software bends towards understanding

Programming

Hunting for abstractions in mathematics

Abstraction (n.) The act or process of separating in thought, of considering a thing independently of its associations; or a substance independently of its attributes; or an attribute or quality independently of the substance to which it belongs. (Oxford English Dictionary) Abstraction is one of the most powerful beasts in the landscape of programming, but […]

  • March 22, 2010

History as documentation

It's real easy to argue about the utility, style and implementation of source code comments, those good ole' pals of code that try to add supplementary information when the pure code isn't enough. However, to focus solely on the latest snapshot of any particular source file is to miss a wealth of information that is […]

  • February 26, 2010