[imtringued]

The definition of spherical cow is also butchered beyond recognition.

Spherical cows are about simplifying assumptions that lead to absurd conclusions, not simplified models or simplified notation in general.

Calling functional programming a spherical cow when you mean that automatic memory management is a simplifying assumption, is such a gross sign of incompetence that nobody should keep reading the rest of the blog.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Spherical cows are about simplifying assumptions that lead to absurd conclusions

There aren’t any commonly-accepted conclusions from spherical cows because the bit is the punch line. It’s a joke a physics 101 student makes when toughing through problems that assume away any real-world complexity and thus applicability.

Spherical cows, in the real world, are pedagogical tools first, approximations second, and mis-applied models by inexperienced practitioners third.

“Hello World” is a spherical cow. Simplifying assumptions about data are spherical cows. (And real dairy farmers implicitly assume flat cows when using square feet to determine how much room and grazing area they need per head.)

[dragontamer]

Spherical cows?

The joke as I recall it, was a physics student who brags that he can predict the winner of any horserace, so long as all of the horses were perfectly spherical perfectly elastic horses.

I'm actually not sure where cows came in, but maybe there's a different version of the joke out there.

[seanhunter]

The spherical cow joke generally goes that a farmer has some problems with his cows (maybe it’s how much milk they’re producing I don’t remember) and so his daughter says “you should ask my boyfriend to help - he’s a physicist and really clever”. So the farmer asks the boyfriend and he says “Well, assume the cows are spherical…”

The joke being because when you do mechanics you generally start modelling any problem with a lot of simplifying assumptions. In particular, that certain things are particles- spherical and uniform.

[ngcc_hk]

The article posted seems a waste of time. This is a remedy https://youtu.be/6oLvgxLFMKo?si=m38yRNygsLniS3Q9

[jibal]

Spherical cows are very much about simplified models--that's what modeling a cow as a sphere is all about.

[IAmBroom]

Yes, but stupidly so.

It's not an idiom for beautiful simplicity.

[jibal]

Stupidity projected ... it's humor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow