You are absolutely correct in that regard. I've talked to many people who hated the textbooks I most liked, and preferred ones that I found unreadable. Just goes to show that what works for you may not work for me.
You are very wrong on the other point: none of what I said is borne out of a view that mathematics should be difficult and "hard" an impenetrable (rather than soft and approachable). Indeed I view this sort of overlong prose as impenetrable and confusing, and the succinct style of e.g. Landau textbooks much clearer (see my other comment).
>The commenter is again taking a minority viewpoint and baselessly extending it.
This is not a minority viewpoint. I'd daresay is the majority opinion among mathematicians. It is also the opinion of prominent computer scientists: Dijkstra, Leslie Lamport, Donald Knuth, to name a few off the top of my head.
It is also plainly true: mathematics is about rigour. It is not an obstacle, nor is it an end in itself, but it is a fundamental part of mathematical study and reasoning. If you aren't being rigorous, you're not doing mathematics, it's just a waste of time. I'll let Michael Spivak speak for me:
"In addition to developing the students’ intuition [...], it is important to persuade them that precision and rigor are neither deterrents to intuition, nor ends in themselves, but the natural medium in which to formulate and think about mathematical questions."
>be aware of such personalities preaching this particular dogma of mathematical instruction: it's fairly common on the internet. But it basically represents the same corner of the mathematics world as that of the programming world where folks insist on using nothing but VI/Emacs on Linux with C++ and/or Haskell
Completely nonsensical comparison (C++ and Haskell?? two languages who could not be further apart), and again, not in the least bit what I mean with my criticism.
