Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do most programmers work so hard at pretending that they’re not doing math?

richardminerich.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 74 posts

Re: Why do most programmers work so hard at pretending that they’re not doing math?

#11

Post by tel »

tikhonj wrote: post #8

I like to think that CS is just a different approach to math. Of course, I say this as somebody who likes Haskell where the programmers work really hard at pretending to be mathematicians :) However, even when I'm writing in other language, I think about things in terms of math. Additionally, my CS courses so far have all been heavily influenced by math, except for systems that was much more heavily influenced by EE.…

I tend to think of Haskell as a language designed by mathematicians but not for mathematicians. Not even to say that it's not useful for doing math but simply that it's not structured to explore ideas via proofs. Consider Coq or Mathematica which are definitely designed with that goal in mind.

I think programmers aren't doing math at all, but I think what programmers do is better, more adroitly, done when its guided strongly by math. For that reason I think programmers should learn lots of math, even if they don't spend much time proving things for their own purposes.

Re: Why do most programmers work so hard at pretending that they’re not doing math?

#12

Post by cageface »

code177 wrote: post #2

Simple answer - the vast majority programmers rarely see more than rudimentary math on most projects, unless those projects are specifically math orientated (actual sciences, for example). The rest of us working on our sites, platforms, apps and what-have-you usually only see anything resembling math when dealing with things like UI and Interaction models, or typically soft-math areas like rating systems and segmenta…

I've never regretted missing out on a formal CS education but I bump up against the limits of my math knowledge all the time. This wasn't the case when I was writing CRUD web apps, of course, but over the last year I've been working in DSP and machine learning and getting my head around the math has been much harder than the coding.

Re: Why do most programmers work so hard at pretending that they’re not doing math?

#13

Post by silentOpen »

tel wrote: post #11
tikhonj wrote: post #8

I like to think that CS is just a different approach to math. Of course, I say this as somebody who likes Haskell where the programmers work really hard at pretending to be mathematicians :) However, even when I'm writing in other language, I think about things in terms of math. Additionally, my CS courses so far have all been heavily influenced by math, except for systems that was much more heavily influenced by EE.…

I tend to think of Haskell as a language designed by mathematicians but not for mathematicians. Not even to say that it's not useful for doing math but simply that it's not structured to explore ideas via proofs. Consider Coq or Mathematica which are definitely designed with that goal in mind. I think programmers aren't doing math at all , but I think what programmers do is better, more adroitly, done when its guided…

The program is a constructive existence proof of the theorem structures embodied in the type system.

Re: Why do most programmers work so hard at pretending that they’re not doing math?

#19

Post by semisight »

celoyd wrote: post #10

We work in an environment where heresay [sic] and taste drive change instead of studies and models. We are stumbling in the dark. Another way to look at it is that we’re making progress, but with lots of false starts, like most progress. Hearsay and taste are what happen when people are working with imperfect information. Probably not even Knuth has perfect information about all the studies and models that might be r…

Haskell's advantages lie in being pure. It can't be 'friendlier,' because friendly languages let you hack things up (and are impure) as opposed to the planning required to lay down some Haskell.

Re: Why do most programmers work so hard at pretending that they’re not doing math?

#20

Post by tel »

silentOpen wrote: post #13
tel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to think of Haskell as a language designed by mathematicians but not for mathematicians. Not even to say that it's not useful for doing math but simply that it's not structured to explore ideas via proofs. Consider Coq or Mathematica which are definitely designed with that goal in mind. I think programmers aren't doing math at all , but I think what programmers do is better, more adroitly, done when its guided…

The program is a constructive existence proof of the theorem structures embodied in the type system.

I'm aware. I suppose I think of the theorems as less interesting though usually.
Post reply on HN