Post #2087615
2026-05-06 14:52 UTC
@shana@mastodon.gamedev.place not really for loops. In math a sum can and often does go up to infinity, whereas a for loop cannot do that.
As an analogy to convey some information is fine, I'm just reminding that it ain't the same thing.
Replies (2)
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@hjvt@hachyderm.io 2026-05-06 14:58
@nyx @shana while not quite a for-loop, in lazy languages that have bignums, you could yield partial sums forever, at least until your sum grows to millions of digits
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@shana@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-05-06 16:13
@nyx Super nitpickity, if you don't have a stop condition, a for-loop will happily go on until the death of the universe (or your pc, whichever comes first) But in general, the sigma is the abstract definition, the for-loop is a possible concrete implementation of that definition, in a language that the target of this PSA (non mathy programmers) can understand and go "oooh ok I get it now". It would have saved me like half a semester if someone had shown me this up front, no other words needed.