siiky
2023/12/29
2023/12/29
en
Q: Why did the chicken transverse the tree?
A: It didn't you fuckin' idiot!
When you need to apply an operation to each element of a list/tree/graph/&c -- or you need to compute some value over all the elements, or &c -- what is the act of going over the elements, or, so to speak, walking over them, named?
There's this whitepaper I had to read, attentively, more than once. In this paper, the authors consistently write "transversal". There are 5 (FIVE) of them! (authors)
And there are 21 (TWENTY ONE) of them! No, not traversals; derivatives of the word "transversal": 13 "transversal(s)" (sgl.+pl.), 5 "transverse(s)" (v.), 2 "transversed" (v.), 1 "transversing" (v.ger.).
Some of the authors are PhDs. They all had to learn to program before reaching this point (I know they had). Some of them give talks at international confs and whatever, in English. And yet... Clearly there are PhDs and PhDs. Out 5, not one person knows that we traverse lists/trees/graphs; that "to transverse" is not even a verb (according to Merriam-Webster).
I don't know why, but this just annoyed me to no end! LKAJHSDFOUIEHAKLJNJLNVCLKXJNCVLKZJHOFUIEH! I had it simmering inside me for a couple months til now.
And I actually forgot I'd written about it before!