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Hard to beat the computational power of a lens.

Is there a concise term for the computation it is doing, besides something like "convolution with a gradually varying kernel"?

It's weird to think the real computation is physics, and machines or optical systems are nested abstractions hosted on that.

I guess one person's low-level / "metal" / "wire" is always someone else's API.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_optics physicists were doing fourier transforms long before they had computers. But it's not an abstraction- it's just a straightforward application of physics (although, I think I understand what you mean).

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