Mathematics shares with a small fraction of other related disciplines and games the quality of unambiguous objectivity. It also has the ~unique quality that you cannot bullshit your way through it. Miss any link in the chain and the whole thing falls apart.
Isn’t programming even more like this?
I could get squidgy about whether a proof is “compelling”, but when I write a program, it either runs and does what I expect, or it doesn’t, with 0 wiggle room.
Sometimes programming is like that, but then I get all anxious that I just haven’t checked everything thoroughly!
My guess is this has more to do with whether or not you’re doing something basic or advanced, in any discipline. It’s just that you run into ambiguity a lot sooner in the humanities
Isn’t programming even more like this?
I could get squidgy about whether a proof is “compelling”, but when I write a program, it either runs and does what I expect, or it doesn’t, with 0 wiggle room.
Sometimes programming is like that, but then I get all anxious that I just haven’t checked everything thoroughly!
My guess is this has more to do with whether or not you’re doing something basic or advanced, in any discipline. It’s just that you run into ambiguity a lot sooner in the humanities