[mikorym]

Just trying to read a mathematical paper is like RE. You could take the approach that you try to follow every step and pause until you have the full specification, but that would take months. And more importantly, it's unlikely that you are willing or able to just do that one paper over the course of 6 months.

Or, like people do in RE, you fall back to things you know (OP knew hex, decimal and binary before he encountered the reflected codes he talks about) and you try to force the paper through your personal veil. I guess when people reverse engineer hardware you follow the routes you took (maybe taking months) the first time you took something apart.

Usually, it makes sense to do so because the reason why you read the paper in the first place is because you think that it has some connection with your own work.

In Quantum Mechanics circles, many authors have different mathematical backgrounds, so just translating what they are doing and thinking is already RE. A good example of this is logical semantics: There are countless flavours of how to write logic down, each with their own symbols and motivations. I would prefer if any logic that you end up with is the internal logic of a category, but analogously this would be like Apple forcing everyone to use their hardware connector pins.

A paper usually does have a path that is chosen by the author, but the RE component is inevitable if you want the paper to be in context with your own reasearch. Otherwise I guess it would be more like a class or university module, where you are following along, but you don't really have an intention of building on the subject matter in your own time. Science also has the disadvantage to newcomers that you don't know how much has already been done, and hence you are forced to have endless lectures to just bring you up to speed.