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by johnnyb_61820 2630 days ago
The fact that there was a well-known kludge to get around the problems inherent in the notation doesn't make the notation right. As the paper pointed out, the new notation didn't drop magically from the sky, it is literally the application of the quotient rule to the derivative. The reason that no one noticed this notation before, is that they didn't think to apply the quotient rule to the quotient dy/dx.

If I had a problem, and my solution involved forgetting to apply the quotient rule to a prominent quotient, it would still be wrong, even if I also came out with a set of kludges that allowed me to get right answers in the most common cases.