Math.TAU

alawatthe alawatthe at googlemail.com
Mon Jun 30 02:58:38 PDT 2014


Although I'm a mathematician, I don't want to argue from a mathematical point of view against the inclusion of Math.TAU 
(For this please read the http://www.thepimanifesto.com/ which was already posted above by Michael).
But instead from a JavaScript point of view:

The only arguments in favor of Math.TAU so far were:

> Another +1. Would save me doing Math.TAU = 2 * Math.PI; at the top of all my trignometry files :-)


That is not really a compelling argument for Math.TAU. And seeing the smiley I don't even think you meant it serious.

>   […] It's a fairly harmless easter egg.


Yes, it is. But (apart from the question whether we should include easter eggs in the language)
aren't there easter eggs, which have to do more with JavaScript and less with a pointless math argument?

Are those really the two best arguments for Math.TAU?


So now to the reasons against Math.TAU:

I don't know a single programming language which includes the tau constant. Why should we?

But the real reason why I'm against the inclusion of Math.TAU is the following:

Brendan you said once that "Math is becoming a dumping ground" see here https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es-discuss/2013-November/034610.html
(So it surprised me much, that you want to champion Math.TAU at the next TC39 meeting.)

I don't think that Math is a dumping ground (or becoming one), but I see no reason to include a property we don't need
and make the Math object even more looking like a dumping ground to some people.
Instead of tau we could add more useful things to the Math object like the gamma function and the error function.
(I’m pretty sure that as soon as I propose those functions, someone will come with the dumping ground argument.)

-- alawatthe aka alex
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