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The Immutability of Math and How Almost Everything Else Will Pass

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Re: The Immutability of Math and How Almost Everything Else Will Pass

#11

Post by pjdorrell »

yxhuvud wrote: post #3

"But is downplaying the importance of math a sustainable message for future generations of engineers?" No, but most programming is definitely not engineering. Math savvy people will definitely be needed - more in some areas than in others, but it is silly to have something most people don't have use for in their daily work as a requirement. The point being is that there is a need for people with engineering skills, b…

Yeah, items 1, 3, 8, 9 and 10 are somewhat nonsensical (3 might need geometry, but it would be more about physics).

Re: The Immutability of Math and How Almost Everything Else Will Pass

#12

Post by jordanlev »

positivity89 wrote: post #2

True - you can't go too far in programming without math.

I very much disagree. I suppose it depends on how exactly you define "far"... but I've been a professional programmer for 15 years now, and have very little math skills (maybe some algebra? mostly forgotten by now, and calculus always escaped me).

As a web developer, most of my skill have to do with designing user interfaces and API's, learning various libraries/languages/frameworks, defining problems, estimating, communicating with other humans, etc.

Re: The Immutability of Math and How Almost Everything Else Will Pass

#13

Post by Qwertious »

bbcbasic wrote: post #9

In response to the dead comment "Is CS a subfield of math or is math a subfield of CS?" This is quite an interesting question because I watched a Robert Harper lecture where he argues the latter. In a nutshell proofs can be mathematical objects and in particular they can be seen as programs.

Sounds a bit like 'declarative vs imperative'.

Re: The Immutability of Math and How Almost Everything Else Will Pass

#14

Post by semi-extrinsic »

douche wrote: post #7
imron wrote: post #5

I did pretty well in math, both in high-school and in university, (Comp Sci degree, with Math a compulsory first-year subject), and when I try looking at a paper describing an algorithm in some Comp Sci related field it's literally all greek to me . I end up spending large amounts of time figuring out the meaning of all the various symbols in the paper and how I can map that to an actual computer program. Thankfully…

Is the problem there the actual math, or the obscure, arcane notation that's used to describe it? Combine that with the frequently terrible and all-too-often incomplete source code that's provided as a reference implementation...

It's not arcane notation, it's content-aware compression at work. When a mathematician sees a small greek delta with subscripts ij, they immediately know it's the Kronecker delta. If every paper would explain every convention and notation in the field, all papers would be huge and much less readable for those working in the field.

Re: The Immutability of Math and How Almost Everything Else Will Pass

#15

Post by js8 »

yxhuvud wrote: post #3

"But is downplaying the importance of math a sustainable message for future generations of engineers?" No, but most programming is definitely not engineering. Math savvy people will definitely be needed - more in some areas than in others, but it is silly to have something most people don't have use for in their daily work as a requirement. The point being is that there is a need for people with engineering skills, b…

> The point being is that there is a need for people with engineering skills, but there is also a need for people with craftman skills.

I disagree. We don't need people with craftman skills, or better to say, we shouldn't need. Because once you can define what is craft, then computer can be programmed to do it.

At work, I still code in (mainframe) assembler sometimes. It's a craft, but it has been largely replaced by compilers. Where it cannot be replaced by compiler (which is definitely not the case of my job), it becomes engineering.

Re: The Immutability of Math and How Almost Everything Else Will Pass

#16

Post by js8 »

There is other big connection between math and programming, which article completely ignores - functional programming (from the mathematical side it corresponds to various lambda calculi).

Interestingly, lambda calculus is a different language (syntactically) for mathematics than classical logic, so the connection is not obvious.

I think programming will eventually become more mathematical, due to this connection.

Re: The Immutability of Math and How Almost Everything Else Will Pass

#17

Post by prof_hobart »

positivity89 wrote: post #2

True - you can't go too far in programming without math.

Without basic maths, sure.

But I've had a 30 year career in software development (covering everything from low level comms software in the 80s through to workflow automation software today) and I never got further than A level maths - which for non-Brits, is the exams you typically do at around 18. I don't feel the lack of a university maths background has ever particularly held me back.

Re: The Immutability of Math and How Almost Everything Else Will Pass

#18

Post by varjag »

js8 wrote: post #15
yxhuvud wrote: post #3

"But is downplaying the importance of math a sustainable message for future generations of engineers?" No, but most programming is definitely not engineering. Math savvy people will definitely be needed - more in some areas than in others, but it is silly to have something most people don't have use for in their daily work as a requirement. The point being is that there is a need for people with engineering skills, b…

> The point being is that there is a need for people with engineering skills, but there is also a need for people with craftman skills. I disagree. We don't need people with craftman skills, or better to say, we shouldn't need. Because once you can define what is craft, then computer can be programmed to do it. At work, I still code in (mainframe) assembler sometimes. It's a craft, but it has been largely replaced by…

Potentially all of the programming can be, and most likely will be replaced by machines, so it's a moot point. Until then, there are tons of programming jobs that are poor fit for automation but are definitely thin on engineering challenges.

Re: The Immutability of Math and How Almost Everything Else Will Pass

#19

Post by agumonkey »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #14
douche wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the problem there the actual math, or the obscure, arcane notation that's used to describe it? Combine that with the frequently terrible and all-too-often incomplete source code that's provided as a reference implementation...

It's not arcane notation, it's content-aware compression at work. When a mathematician sees a small greek delta with subscripts ij, they immediately know it's the Kronecker delta. If every paper would explain every convention and notation in the field, all papers would be huge and much less readable for those working in the field.

In other words, slang.

Re: The Immutability of Math and How Almost Everything Else Will Pass

#20

Post by Someone »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #14
douche wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the problem there the actual math, or the obscure, arcane notation that's used to describe it? Combine that with the frequently terrible and all-too-often incomplete source code that's provided as a reference implementation...

It's not arcane notation, it's content-aware compression at work. When a mathematician sees a small greek delta with subscripts ij, they immediately know it's the Kronecker delta. If every paper would explain every convention and notation in the field, all papers would be huge and much less readable for those working in the field.

Indeed. Making it easier for beginners to read is like writing:

    // This is where your code starts executing
    int main( int argc, char *argv[])
    {
        // repeat 10 times, with i counting up from zero up to nine
        for( int i = 0; i
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