Member-only story
Radians for Software Developers
Providing a natural description for an angle
If you’re prefer a video version of this content, it is available on YouTube
A Call to Arms
Software developers need to use Radians. There isn’t an easy way around this, although you could spend time and effort converting to and from degrees.
Nothing wrong with degrees
There isn’t anything essentially wrong with using degrees. For many, these are the way of measuring angles and it feels perfectly natural to do so. They are somewhat arbitrary though, since 90° represents a right-angle — but why?
Degrees might be represented by the following diagram:
Advantages Radian
Radians are a very natural way to describe an angle. It ties together angle and length in a way that degrees does not, and this makes certain calculations easier than they might be. Since radians are easier to work with in calculations, and programming involves calculations it makes sense that radians are used in programming.
