this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
1199 points (99.1% liked)

Programmer Humor

19176 readers
973 users here now

Welcome to Programmer Humor!

This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!

For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.

Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] MisterFrog@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

(Pressure) * (volume) = (# moles) * (gas constant) * (temperature)

The ideal gas law.

In another thread I admit I didn't explain my position here well enough. I would only not explain this equation given sufficient context (e.g. I've shown all those variables in a table, and my intended audience is people familiar with basic chemistry, which I'd expect would be everyone reading the report for this particular example, since this is high school chemistry, and the topic of all reports I work on is chemical engineering.)

People can read the conclusions if they're not familiar with chemistry, and for the detail, they're not my intended audience anyway.

Generally I still hold the position that you should define variables as much as possible, unless it's overly cumbersome, given your intended audience would clearly understand anyway.

In context this simple equation is obvious even if you change the symbols, as long as there is sufficient context to draw from.