Re: Literate Programming, Axiom, and Physically Based Rendering

[Svjatoslav Agejenko]

Hello Tim !


Idea is wonderful! 

It can also serve as a living math book. Book that captures human
understanding about math. It starts with basic concepts and next
chapters can build upon this. Book can contain executable code
alongisde explanation. So someone learning particular subject can
also run the related code in the book to see it in action and solve
equations symbolically or numerically.

Math is a timeless thing and is worth preserving in some canonical self
contained way. 

Another interesting finding: This Chat-GPT is very good at teaching and
explanation. Yes, sometimes it lies convincingly, so everything it says
have to be verified. Despite that, most of the time it is correct. It
can also write code in different languages and problem domains. Maybe
it can be good tool to facilitate this effort.

By the way, there is The Long Now Foundation. They encourage long term
thinking and preservation work. Maybe they can finance this project ?
https://longnow.org/contact/






So, why exactly it is not going to happen ?


Best regards,
Svjatoslav



On Fri, 2023-03-31 at 22:21 -0400, Tim Daly wrote:
> I just received the 4th edition copy of Physically Based
> Rendering[0].
> Donald Knuth wrote "This book has deservedly won an Academy Award.
> I believe it should also be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize."
> 
> It is a 1200 page literate program. It not only contains the actual
> source code, it contains complete explanations of the physical theory
> and the implementation ideas. This textbook is used in a various
> upper-class and graduate programs. I can highly recommend it.
> 
> I had hoped that Axiom could have been reborn as a literate program.
> The idea was to "make it live beyond the authors". Each algorithm
> would provide an explanation, various literature references, and some
> examples as well as limitations. That way a person with no background
> knowledge in computer algebra could learn and contribute. Such a
> literate program would have set the standard for mathematical
> software.
> 
> Sadly that's not going to happen.
> 
> Tim
> 
> [0] Matt Pharr, Wenzel Jakob, and Greg Humphreys "Physically Based
> Rendering"
> https://www.pbr-book.org/
> 

-- 
Svjatoslav Agejenko
WWW: http://svjatoslav.eu