Math Not Required (2023) • Hacker News Board

Re: Math Not Required (2023)

#11

Post by loose-cannon » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 3:02 AM UTC

sfpotter wrote: post #7

This never made any sense to me. Why are so many programmers math phobic? You'd think an interest in math and an interest in programming would go hand in hand, especially since they aid and abet one another so beautifully. My programming got way better the better at math I got, and vice versa.

I think a big part of undergraduate math is theory/abstraction building, which is usually very different than the activity of programming. I've studied quite a bit of math, so I can appreciate both. But I can definitely see why the former drives people away.

Re: Math Not Required (2023)

#12

Post by vibe1337prover » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 8:07 AM UTC

I worked a bit on formalizing math using assisted theorem provers, and found that good theorems are basically well coded functions. I think both the perspectives complement each other well. The added advantage of knowing math allows one to write provably correct functions, finding their runtimes etc. In this age of LLMs spewing code, this probably is the best trick a programmer can have up their sleeves.

Re: Math Not Required (2023)

#13

Post by tadasv » Mon, Aug 25, 2025, 8:40 PM UTC

sfpotter wrote: post #7

This never made any sense to me. Why are so many programmers math phobic? You'd think an interest in math and an interest in programming would go hand in hand, especially since they aid and abet one another so beautifully. My programming got way better the better at math I got, and vice versa.

i've been ~15 years in the tech industry, working as swe. I recently purchased 15 books on from proofs, calculus, linear algebra, real analysis combinatorics, diff equations to self-study math. Yes, you almost never need to use anything beyond basic math, but there's so many things to learn. And math is fun, I miss my university days.