Every self respecting linear algebra teach causes students to hate matrices. If you can't you are not qualified. Only now, after three years without formal study of matrices, I learned to appreciate them.
I made a small computer graphics project at school. I had a separate function for X axis rotation, separate function for Y axis rotation, Z rotation and XYZ scaling were separate function, so was XYZ translation. My teacher told me to use matrices but I simply could not understand why it is better. I mean, matrices are creepy and functions are simple. Rotation around arbitrary axis was a bit cheaty (and buggy); this is fine for a small project though.
Now I understand the beauty of matrices. Now I see what is wrong with transformations stored as list of function objects. 8 years ago I was too young to understand the value of simple matrix that replaces arbitrarily long list of functions with parameters.
My friend recently showed me a piece of code from his hobby project. The code was full of conditional and switch cases. After little thought we realized that confusing branching in code can be replaced with a single matrix. It was the most satisfying change I ever made in code.
