First principles Memes

The calculus gatekeepers have spoken! At the top, we have the elegant definition of differentiation—a beautiful limit that captures the essence of instantaneous change. Below that? The chaotic battlefield where mathematicians store their emotional trauma. Every time you memorize a derivative formula instead of deriving it from first principles, a mathematician somewhere sheds a single tear. Sure, you could painfully work through the chain rule from scratch every time... or you could just accept that these formulas are the mathematical equivalent of therapy. Remember kids, real mathematicians derive everything from scratch—and also never sleep, subsist entirely on coffee, and have "lim h→0" tattooed somewhere inappropriate.