I've seen someone take a piece of code from 72 lines down to 3 lines by just doing some simple mathematical analysis before actually getting to refactoring. The code was also simpler, and easier to understand.
Do you need math for be a good programmer? No. Does it help to know math while programming? Absolutely.
Programming is not math
21–30 of 115 posts
Re: Programming is not math
#22as an aside it's kind of interesting why there isn't as much research on teaching programming as their is say on refinement types, separation logic or pointer aliasing. I think the reasons are annoying. In academic research, nobody cares about education. The big universities that you think of as education powerhouses like Stanford, MIT, CMU, are all at heart research universities. Their faculty were not hired because…
It's not clear if this directly addresses your complaint ("programming education" vs "computer science education") but there is a specific special interest group for computer science education that's been holding conferences since 1983.
Symposia/conferences:
http://www.sigcse.org/events/iticse http://www.sigcse.org/events/icer http://www.sigcse.org/events/symposia
On top of that there there's a great talk from David Patterson about how they are approaching their software engineering courses at Berkeley.
Re: Programming is not math
#23as an aside it's kind of interesting why there isn't as much research on teaching programming as their is say on refinement types, separation logic or pointer aliasing. I think the reasons are annoying. In academic research, nobody cares about education. The big universities that you think of as education powerhouses like Stanford, MIT, CMU, are all at heart research universities. Their faculty were not hired because…
Anybody who has the aptitude to make a career in a given field, has the aptitude to teach themselves, with a bit of guidance from a syllabus, a professor, and/or a TA. Most learning inherently must be done by the learner. The learner has to study the material at their own pace, and then practice, practice, practice. There is very little a third party can do to expedite the process, other than provide overall trajecto…
It's hard to disagree with a statement like "learning inherently must be done by the learner", because what are the instructors to do, stick their hands into the minds of a student and place the knowledge there? However I think you (and attitudes like this) go a long way to discount the skill required to provide guidance, to recognize when the learner is really stuck, to review output, and construct an overall trajectory.
I think it's the case that someone who can make a career before starting education can teach themselves, but what about the other way around, can we give the proper instruction and inspiration so that someone could have a career? Boring/bad classes disengage students, interesting/good classes engage students. What even makes a good/bad class? Wish we could study that...
Re: Programming is not math
#24The problem is Math is a large topic and means different things to people. Referring to the intended subset may be clearer.
However, Everything depends on the purpose of the code.
Programming is equally an insanely large topic now, so I must should temper this orignal statement somewhat
Re: Programming is not math
#25Programming is not math! Math is Math! Math is a tool used in programming, engineering, economics, etc. To reduce a subject to a tool used in the subject is reductionist to the extreme and does not acknowledge the richness and complexity of the subject.
Re: Programming is not math
#26My main hobby is learning foreign languages and I have noticed that a very large proportion of people on language-learning sites happen to be programmers of one sort or another. Of course, this may just reflect a tendency of programmers to be aware of and use the technology available to pursue their other interests, and thus be overrepresented on such sites, rather than an affinity between interest and ability in com…
On the other hand my interest for languages/etymology is an extension of the pursuit of expressiveness in programming. So seeing how humans categorized and related syntax with semantics is valuable to me even if I never cared using learning technology (unless you count etymonline, wikipedia and such as learning tech)
Re: Programming is not math
#27This does not compute. It's obvious.
Programming is the human means to get a digital circuit to turn "one" and "zero" in a particular way.
Applied programming is to a CS degree as diagnosing and curing disease by a physician is to microbiology.
Applied programming is to math what diagnosing and curing disease by a physician is to chemistry/physics.
For fun, go ask your dev friends to compare and contrast NP-complete and NP-hard today.
Re: Programming is not math
#28as an aside it's kind of interesting why there isn't as much research on teaching programming as their is say on refinement types, separation logic or pointer aliasing. I think the reasons are annoying. In academic research, nobody cares about education. The big universities that you think of as education powerhouses like Stanford, MIT, CMU, are all at heart research universities. Their faculty were not hired because…
Anybody who has the aptitude to make a career in a given field, has the aptitude to teach themselves, with a bit of guidance from a syllabus, a professor, and/or a TA. Most learning inherently must be done by the learner. The learner has to study the material at their own pace, and then practice, practice, practice. There is very little a third party can do to expedite the process, other than provide overall trajecto…
There is very little a third party can do to expedite the process
So why is college so damn expensive? Why does formal education exist at all? Just because the study of education hasn't been very rigorous and is widely ignored doesn't mean that there aren't better methods to find.
Re: Programming is not math
#29The story links directly to the comments thread. Could the original poster or an admin please fix?
Sorry, my mistake. I don't have access to change it though, only the story title.
Re: Programming is not math
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We don't tell people they can be bad at talking. The brain evolved to communicate effectively with others. It did not evolve to manipulate symbols in a logical way. We can do it (some of us rather well) since the brain is still quite flexible. But it may account for the difference.
Then there's the Molière character I can't remember from Candide who says the nose evolved so we can rest our eyeglasses.
That's funny, but if your serious then your response does not make much sense here. My point is: Language came early in human development and to humans everywhere, without exception. Indeed the need to communicate may have been one of the main selectors justifying the cost (Brains are expensive to run). But many tribes are ok without maths and it has been around for just about three millennia and so could not possibly have had much influence on brain development.