For quite a some time, I'm witnessing a great example of a religious thinking here at the forum.
I'm talking about someone who
obviously has substantial knowledge in applied math. Who had been an active collaborator at MathSoft forums. And who makes awesome gifts to SMath community.
Let's see: there is SMath software, that was created by Andrey. He tried to express his intention in real code, using existing hardware and software frameworks. There is some plan (unknown to others), and SMath is its real implementation (though incomplete and imperfect, as any software is).
As a user of a proprietary software, you may take it as is and just use it; you may get involved in a limited way: ask questions, report bugs, help newbies, write plugins, ask for new features, and even discuss the overall plot (and try to convince the author to change his mind on some topics).
But there is another, very creative way: you may take your (absolutely marginal) knowledge, and
invent your own explanation of what's going on with the software. Then, you may present your inventions as "facts" to the audience, decorated by "good deeds" such as contributions, and visible "competence" such as usage of relevant terminology.
Have you ever watched a movie that mentions topics that you are competent with? Haven't you had an urge to tell the author to go to school to learn basic things? And haven't you seen others, who don't know the topic, who draw conclusions from that utter garbage from the movie? You may be that "other" yourself, as long as that same movie tells about other things you don't know about...
So let's use some cryptic (err, parable) language to encrypt strange ideas. E.g., let's declare your misunderstanding of time() return as something related to units "puzzled handling". Let's put some citations into the attached worksheet, that are relevant to "computer time handling" (UNIX epoch/POSIX time etc.); let's also touch the trial softwares and evil Microsoft... instead of doing 5-minutes research to discover that SMath counts time from January 1st 1601, and find out that that's what e.g.
FILETIME structure is used for. Let's say that "Smath has two symbolic engines" with default Maxima (while it actually has its own, and others are not of SMath, but of external plugins, and there may be others as well). Let's avoid clear descriptions, but use colored phrases like "curiosity", "so what so", "Big Blue" style". And don't forget to do that without a shadow of doubt.
What will this do? As long as existing users concerned, everyone will just exercise their tolerance. But for a new user, who may come to forum, the multitude of posts in every topic will probably be at least as important as author's words... A "prophet" with an interpretation, that may well gains importance on its own.
Of course, I already knew how those "great" books from "experts" about everything are created, but now I see that in progress...
Just an observation. Feel free to mark as inappropriate.