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by Aurornis 533 days ago
> this is something that I used to do with academic papers

Academic papers are designed to be read from start to finish. They have an abstract to set the stage, an introduction, a more detailed setup of the problem, some results, and a conclusion in order.

A structured, single-document academic paper is not analogous to a multi-file codebase.
1 comments
rorytbyrne 533 days ago
No, they are designed to elucidate the author's thought process - not the reader's learning process. There's a subtle, but important difference.

Also: https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee384m/Handouts/HowtoReadPape...

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p1esk 532 days ago
they are designed to elucidate the author's thought process - not the reader's learning process

No, it’s exactly the opposite: when I write papers I follow a rigid template of what a reader (reviewer) expects to see. Abstract, intro, prior/related work, main claim or result, experiments supporting the claim, conclusion, citations. There’s no room or expectation to explain any of the thought process that led to the claim or discovery.

Vast majority of papers follow this template.

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