Geometry for Programmers
by Oleksandr Kaleniuk · first published 2023
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I love these things! Approximation is art. I have a similar example in my book Geometry for Programmers (https://www.manning.com/books/geometry-for-programmers). There I make a polynomial approximation for sine that is: 1) odd (meaning antisymmetric); 2) precise at 0 and Pi/2 (and -Pi/2 automatically); 3)…
on “Cosine Implementation in C” ↗…transformations: to and from the standard cube, and each transformation is then much simpler than their composition. 15 years after I learned that trick and 10 years after I wrote an app, I wrote a book called Geometry for Programmers. If not for Spivak, I would have drowned in equations, never written the app and would have had nothing to write a book about.
on “Ask HN: What are the most eye-opening textbooks you have ever read?” ↗Also, Geometry for Programmers but only because I wrote it. I had to update my skills significantly while gathering material and doing all the experiments. Not sure if reading the book would have the same effect :-)
on “Ask HN: Math books that made you significantly better at math?” ↗…Please don't take it all too seriously. There was COVID-19, I had nothing better to do. I did write a new book since then, and my publisher would bite my head off for missing this opportunity. It's called Geometry for Programmers and it was published by Manning just this year. https://www.manning.com/books/geometry-for-programmers It's about curves, surfaces, transformations, homogeneous coordinates, rational splines, distance…
on “So You Think You Know C? [pdf]” ↗Hello, OP here. I wrote a whole book around the idea that mathematics is understanding first and symbolic computation second. In Geometry for Programmers, SymPy does the grind for you in every chapter (except chapter 2). Initially, I was even going to omit all the math notation altogether and turn all the formulas into Python snippets. But several reviewers…
…suppose. If you did some geometry in school, maybe some basic algebra, if you know what a function is (and I think every programmer knows what a function is) - you're good to go. Even if the book is called Geometry for Programmers, I was trying really hard to make it self-sufficient. E. g. if you want to get deep into fascinating stuff like NURBS, you need to know a little calculus. So there is a chapter on calculus. It is shallow…
…no way I would have learned it otherwise. Third, it helped me cement a publishing deal with Manning. They came to me and proposed to propose them a book on geometry. And so I did. The book is called Geometry for Programmers and it's coming this summer. Fourth, I do public lectures (or at least I used to before the war), and the audience loves interactive illustrations. So I usually turn my site pages into presentation-like…
on “Ask HN: What has your personal website/blog done for you?” ↗I wrote Geometry for Programmers (https://www.manning.com/books/geometry-for-programmers) and even so, I don't think that math knowledge is really essential for programming. It is, of course, a non-perishable competitive advantage so…
on “Ask HN: Math for Programmers?” ↗…because the routine was riddled with needless virtual constructors, copying type conversions, and something called CreateInstanceSlow. Ten years after, I gathered a few of these anecdotes and wrote the Geometry for Programmers book (https://www.manning.com/books/geometry-for-programmers) with its main message: when you know geometry behind your tools, you can either use them efficiently, or rewrite them completely.
on “Making Python 100x faster with less than 100 lines of Rust” ↗Nice and useful post BTW. Most programmers seem oblivious about what takes place "under the hood". A side note: I still plan to read your Geometry for Programmers, now that it is close to being finished. All the best!
on “If you can't write assembly like a poet, you can read disassembly like a hunter” ↗I thought so too. When I started Geometry for Programmers, I was going to write all the formulas as SymPy snippets. I thought that was a brilliant idea because, yes, normally programmers are much more comfortable with code rather than with math notation, and…
on “A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics” ↗…have releases. Exactly two of these releases are actually used by other people. The other 53 are experiments never has been or never meant to be finished. However! This year I finished a book called Geometry for Programmers (and I'm proud of it so here's the link: https://www.manning.com/books/geometry-for-programmers). The game my brother and I started in 2009 was a failure sales-wise, but a pair of algorithms from it became…
on “Ask HN: I am overflowing with ideas but never finish anything” ↗I was considered bad at maths a long time ago, barely passed calculus in college. 20 years later, I wrote Geometry for Programmers. Maths is a lot of things. Meticulous symbol crunching is one of them. I'm not good at that specific part, I'm constantly ending up with the wrong sign or losing variables doing even the simplest algebra.…
on “What if nobody is bad at maths?” ↗What do you think about Geometry for Programmers? https://www.manning.com/books/geometry-for-programmers It has been recently published (April 2023) and not yet in any lists.
on “Books for Game Developers” ↗I tried that in Geometry for Programmers https://www.manning.com/books/geometry-for-programmers I needed a short chapter on calculus so I go on and explain Bezier curves and splines, but I couldn't afford a full introduction. So, I only explained…
on “Ask HN: Can calculus be taught without differentiating or integrating by hand?” ↗