[edanm]

Why did we move from Roman Numerals or other systems of writing down numbers, to the current numerals we use today? Simple - they make lots of things easier.

Now, no one is claiming that Tau vs. Pi is even close to the same level of importance. But it makes some things just that much easier.

[TheOnly92]

Of course, if there's proof that the changes from Pi to Tau will accelerate technological advancement even by 0.01%, I'll totally support it.

The fact is that making things easier doesn't necessarily mean improvement.

[jerf]

"The fact is that making things easier doesn't necessarily mean improvement."

Untrue, and if you're a programmer you ought to know better. Making something that works the exact same way, only easier, is definitely an improvement. Now it takes less of your finite mental reserves to accomplish a task, and you can now go further in the same amount of time. Making something that abstracts away some things and makes the rest easier is often an improvement, when the advantage of being easier outweighs the loss of control.

Or are you still programming in raw machine language?

Programmers live in such a rich ecosystem of things that are improvements merely because they are easier that it is easy to take that process for granted without understanding it. How many orders of magnitude less effective would I be in machine language? Certainly more than one, almost certainly more than two (working on a network + manual memory management = security fail).

[TheOnly92]

Okay, I failed to properly address "improvement". By "improvement" I mean the time required to develop something new. Of course everything improves, simply because it's built on top of the base of an older version.

A simple example, it took months to write a simple browser with a little less features than the browsers available during the Win 9x era. Does it take weeks now? I doubt so.

Ok, to put it more simply, what I meant was improvement in the time required not as in the thing that was produced. Uh, get what I mean?

[jerf]

"Does it take weeks now? I doubt so."

Ooooo, bad choice of example. It takes a day or so now, since WebKit is embeddable.

You're trying to separate something that can't be separated. You can't separate "making things take less time" from "making better things possible", because the bound in all cases is time. If you have to spend less time on X, then you've got more to spend on Y; if you can't spend less time on X you'll never reach Y. It's the rare improvement that can only improve quality, but doesn't in any way permit you to instead trade that for time.

[TheOnly92]

WebKit is embeddable, sure, but if you're to write a browser that functions similarly to today's browser, it still takes months. You're gonna need to do bookmarks, tabs, history. Things have been made easier, surely but things are still as complicated as ever.

However this is drawn too far from the topic of Tau, what I'm trying to imply is that science and maths has work centuries with Pi, we've found many great theories with it as well. But in the modern era (quantum), Tau seems irrelevant (okay, I haven't studied too much about quantum, but I've read on articles and there's no mention on Pi either, correct me if I'm wrong).

What's the use of making things simple at the same time confusing people? Things have always worked out, and it should continue to work on.