“Your worst Nightmare” April 10, 2008
Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , trackback"Quaternions are the things that scare all manner of mice and men. They are the things that go bump in the night.They are the reason your math teacher gave you an F. They are all that you have come to fear, and more.Quaternions are your worst nightmare."-from cprogramming.com
I have just spent a marathon session of trying to debug my code that is heavily laced with Quaternions. This 4 dimensional, real and imaginary numbers have plagued my dreams the last few nights. I have been fighting and fighting. Delving deep into code that someone who no longer works for us had written. He did things in a manner that was difficult to understand and follow. He chose not to comment. He wrote in "matlab"(shudder). He counted starting with the number 1! (as opposed to all sane programmers who count from zero).
And today, after going on a chocolate run for the Mission Planners (if the planners ain’t happy, nobody is happy), I found the source of my hell.
I couldn’t make a unit vector to save my life. Oy vey! I need a drink!
Sigh…
Comments»
I followed that link. Um. Then I searched on “quarternions”. Um.
Girl, my *MINOR* in math was years and years ago. All I get out of this is that you’re doing three-dimensional rotations (which makes a great deal of sense for what you’re doing).
Ugh. Enjoy.
I have a headache now!
Well, aren’t those little symbols purdy?