Emphasis on explaining background knowledge in PL; not much so in physics?

Question

As a CS-Physics double major undergrad entering my senior year, I have begun reading a handful of articles from both fields. Specifically, I have read some articles from programming language-related journals (eg. OOPSLA, ICSE, SIGPL) and physics-related ones (eg. Nature Physics, Physics Review, J. Physique).

From them, I noticed that most PL articles spend a few pages on explaining the preliminaries, especially but not limited to when the research is about a rather specialized topic (such as quantum computing). In contrast, I felt that physics papers often forego this step, especially but not limited to when the research is about a rather specialized topic (such as cavity QED), either trusting the reader to already have the required knowledge or sending them on a footnote trail journey.

From this observation, I would like to pose the following questions:

1. Is this observation valid to a certain extent? I did only read a few articles, so I am fully considering the possibility that this anecdotal evidence is just an accidental fluke.
2. If there is such a significant cultural difference between research fields, what determines such cultures? I know that historical happenstance will play a large part, but I'd like to hear about some systemic factors. For example, I briefly considered and rejected the theory that many areas of PL often have little common knowledge, necessitating such preliminary knowledge refreshers. I discarded this theory since physics could also, if not more, be specialized to equally niche yet fascinating fields, requiring whole new set of knowledge. Perhaps other characteristics of each field could explain such differences?

Answer 1

It shouldn't be a surprise that papers in programming languages and in physics are quite different. PL is about constructing things, usually based on principles learned from earlier languages. Physics is about discovery of things in the real world. The former is artificial in a real way, so it is natural to explain something about the base conditions to set the stage for what follows. It might not be necessary to do the same for working physicists.

The mental model of a functional language is quite different from that of an OO language. The "paradigm". New paradigms might require fairly extensive background ideas to set that stage.

Programming languages create artificial worlds. It isn't "science" in the same way that physics is, though there can be scientific elements, such as user interface (API) design. So, a reader needs some initial guidance about where to start thinking and evaluating what will follow. This would probably only be necessary in physics if a paper were to take a radical approach to an old problem. That might be necessary in a textbook, but not in a professional paper. The fields are different. You wouldn't be surprised to see different structure in a history paper and a CS paper, I'd guess.

Answer 2

Beyond the conventions, which often favor succinct, appropriately-cited introductions (common across physics, chemistry, materials science, biology, etc...), there is also the issue of journal restrictions on number of figures, number of citations, word/character count etc. Often times a lot of stuff which can be considered general background has to be omitted in favor of citing a review (for example), or even a more specific equation derivation which is relevant will at best be relegated to the supporting information.