Three sins of authors in computer science and math (1997)
I don&#x27;t agree with the author. For me each of the sins have their goal that isn&#x27;t in what they state. I wonder what the author thinks of this almost 25 years later.<p>-----<p>* The grandmothering: Too often have I read an abstract, not understood it (since an abstract is allowed to be dense), and quit on these first lines orienting the paper in the field . If it&#x27;s your field these lines don&#x27;t cost, if you&#x27;re a newcomer, or from another field, you get the keywords you need to know before starting. And often you know this paper isn&#x27;t what you were looking for.
As for the near-meaninglessness of this sentence: look up the first sentence of any book. You can&#x27;t put 100 pages in one sentence.<p>* The table of contents: writers can&#x27;t actually insert a table of contents, yet a paper needs it. True, nobody cares what&#x27;s in Section 5, yet without this sentence you don&#x27;t know when it will end, you don&#x27;t know what you get. You care about how the content escalates. Also note that each of the sentences is more than just the title of the section. The actual title of Section 6 is just &#x27;Time complexity&#x27;.<p>* Conclusions that don&#x27;t: His solution is literally the opposite of what is taught. Yes to a perspective, no to new information. Also his example is incomplete, three more sentences follow that are not summarizing.