Playing with limits really exposes the power of math, while playing with templates or conditional compilation always leaves a dry taste in my mouth. All the same, just making something run badly is satisfying, and iterative refinement is a pleasure. But showing that any class of objects necessarily has conditions x, y, and z given a and b is power incarnate, even when it’s botched it’s exhilarating. The biggest problem with math is that there’s no way to generate ‘stream of consciousness’ style what might be valid, it’s all fits and starts. You can always iterate over the problem space with a computer until you think of something clever and elegant to be proud of. In math, sometimes you write total nonsense, and know it quickly.

I like it, though I never really feel that way about my code. Maybe math, but not code . And I just annoy my girlfriend when I start sputtering half baked geometry.

There is a more enlightened, albeit smaller, class of women that either A) do appreciate the artisan finieries of code because they’ve previously either worked with it or close to it or B) are just wise enough to understand that to code is to create and that any act of creation is an inherently expressive endeavor capable producing an artistic masterpiece. And any woman who has yet to realize that probably isn’t worth dealing with anyway.