Somewhat off topic, but the quote from the article "Professor Parkinson actually apologized for not giving me a top grade on it, explaining that he had a strict rule never to give a top grade to a Sufficiency that took more than the basic half-semester." is something that I disagree with it.
I find that applying strict rules to assignments without flexibility is essentially academic laziness (and I say that as an academic) . It tells students formalities are more important than content. While I recognize that sticking to deadlines is important, we should have enough flexibility in our rules to make exceptions. If the teacher apologises for his strict rules, it is clearly a case where flexibility should be applied.
Well, as a user for rendering/phyiscs at least I started to like the use quaternions instead of vectors because some operations are just plainly easier and can remove the need to apply them in a certain order compared to vectors. This is from practical experience when the heavy math is abstrated away.
Numerical math was scrapped in my naive CS math curiculum, but I think some operations here have a greater numerical stability for practical purposes.
Heavily reminds me of the pi/tau debate, or proponents of the dozenal system. This is what professinal attachment can do to you.
I find that applying strict rules to assignments without flexibility is essentially academic laziness (and I say that as an academic) . It tells students formalities are more important than content. While I recognize that sticking to deadlines is important, we should have enough flexibility in our rules to make exceptions. If the teacher apologises for his strict rules, it is clearly a case where flexibility should be applied.