Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by smithmayowa 1320 days ago
This, so much this, writting nested equations are hell in python and other mathematica alternatives but they are so easy in mathematica.
1 comments

What is a nested equation?
Nesting is the concept of having a thing under another thing. 1+2 will be referred to as a mathematical equation and 1+((((a-b)/3+2/87)-6)23) will be referred to as a nested equation. Of cause this is rather lose semantics since both are expressions or statements and not equations, but that’s how the language is typically used.

This is what that looks like in wolfram alpha: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1%2B%28%28%28%28a-b%29%... It looks the same in Mathematica while your typing it in, which makes I extremely easy to work with, because even very complex equations look exactly like usual in Mathematica instead of ending up looking like lisp implementation of the Fibonacci sequence.

> looking like lisp implementation of the Fibonacci sequence.

I wonder if Lisp can benefit from a similar 2d visualization sugar.

Yeah, the nesting Viz shouldn't be too hard. Just nested divs in HTML really.

And super/sub scripts are in HTML as well.

Unicode is doing all the symbols these days

Param placement like n=0 under a summation, etc are a little more idiosyncratic