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Comment by foxes | Hacker News Reader

Lol at the proofs that are simply the words "trivial", "easy" etc. Why is it so hard to just write it out fully, in a completed paper -- it would barely add any length. I agree I may find them easy, but the attitude is harmful. Besides after doing any sort of functional programming the whole paper is obvious, so why even bother :). The same brain rot extends to more complicated situations.

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I don't know about this particular paper, but there's a) usually a page limit when publishing and b) definitely a limit to a reader's patience. So filling a paper with trivial or technical proofs is not good form.

That being said, many scientific papers would benefit from being rewritten in a style that focuses on the reader and readability. That's only understandable: when writing for a journal or conference, there's a lot of time pressure and your audience are bespoke experts on the matter at hand. But there's only a slight chance your paper becomes important to a broader audience. I wonder if one could form a business of rewriting classic papers of CS and math.

A business? Maybe not, but certainly many a masters degree has been had doing just that.

For b) most people do not read a paper linearly, you look at maybe the intro, skim around a bit, and then maybe go to an appropriate section. If you are really invested then maybe you go through the whole thing. A graph would be a much better format. A bespoke expert with time pressure is not going to comb over the whole thing, they will pick out the bits they care about.

For the intended audience of a paper, many things are considered trivial or easy. The attitude may be harmful when teaching(if you’re unaware of what the students find trivial), but in professional communication it is a signal to the reader that they shouldn’t spend unnecessary time focusing on some (trivial or easy to verify) part of the argument.

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