11–20 of 187 posts
It really depends on what software you're working on. If its regular web development, eshop, fintech etc, math knowledge required is close to none. Backend or frontend doesn't matter. If you switch to more advanced software e.g. geo, cad, games then it's a different story.
"How much X do yo need for programming"
It helps to have knowledge about X if you want to come up with a solution.
I have/had a few colleagues with almost no math knowledge beyond primary school. One was quite a good programmer, interested in all kinds of technical stuff. He had failed secondary school because of, well, reasons, but he wasn't dumb, and wrote decent code and was quite inventive. Another one was someone with a business school degree who had changed careers. Not a glitch in his school career, but his math was very w…
At their core, isn’t what makes them great, their simplicity? Upload videos, connect with other people?
I’m no math wiz but can probably code an MVP of the product that FB and YT were when they launched. The colleagues you described probably could too. Would love to learn more about the hidden complexity!
I can totally understand WHY maths would be important for some programmers (and why thinking mathematically would help), but "programming" covers such a spectrum - for me it's always felt more like the Lego I spent my entire childhood building was more important. Somewhere between logic and creativity.
Depends on what you write. For some applications, you need a great deal of advanced dynamic maths, for some applications, matrix math, for some, heavy-duty topology, etc. I have a lot of admiration for folks that write software that implements advanced mathematical reasoning, but that is only a part of what is required to develop shipping applications and systems. For me, I learned the standard calculus stuff, but ne…
It would be nice to have a map. Some programming is plumbing.. some is investigating (maintenance).. some is more attention to details (specs and protocols) but sometimes it's raw wide and deep math. You don't solve dynamic programming problems without a mathematical thinking (or else I want to see 'you' operate :)
Absolutely. Reflecting on my path, I got that in Algebra 2. Everything after that, was really just scaling and application.
Calculus is 90% trig and algebra. Lots of it, and applied. Quite voluminous, but rather pedestrian.
I would tend to agree with the article that math can be quite useful as a general mental model and can often help to find cleaner solutions to some problems.
There are also a lot of applications that require some, often quite specific, knowledge of math: machine learning, cryptography, game engines, to name a few.
But most programmers don't need to use or understand the specialized notation of math - all the weird and beautiful symbols. We use the programming language as notation instead.
Some branches like calculus or statistics are not used regularly by the average programmer, but other branches like integer arithmetic or boolean logic is pervasive in any form of programming.