I always thought that being an Engineer assumes you have knowledge of mathematics. The way this word is being used in Software ist kind of strange. "I built a blog in php, I'm a Software Engineer" - this feels kind of awkward to me.
I always thought that being an Engineer assumes you have knowledge of mathematics. Not really. Mostly just algorithms and procedures of some math concepts(Calculus and Linear Algebra) which roughly corresponds to the first year of North American math major.
A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
81–90 of 227 posts
Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
#82This topic comes up every so often. I think my previous comment applies here [1]: I started a Math degree after 16 years of programming without any Math beyond high school (the highest being high school calculus). Most of my work as a software developer didn't require any "higher" Maths. Once I began studying math, including Modern Algebra, Analysis, Graph Theory, Category Theory, etc., I realized I understood many t…
Well written...and I'd argue the same is for both Computer Science and software engineering in general. When teaching beginners, it still astonishes/annoys me how many students tell me, "My program didn't work"...as if there was just one reason why it didn't work, as opposed to hundreds of possible reasons.
Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm employed as a Software Engineer now but my degree is in ECE. The engineering curriculum at my university (Rutgers) was extremely math intensive. I didn't take a whole lot of software classes but I'm glad I did take all that math. I think it's dishonest to call yourself a Software Engineer and not have an engineering degree. Semantics, but I earned the title.
In some countries it's illegal to call yourself an engineer without having an engineering degree. The degree is "protected" by the government and can only be acquired from certified organizations (like universities).
Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
#84Mary L Boas "Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences" [1] has absolutely been my favorite and most-used maths text in the 9 years since graduating uni. It's like a reference manual of just about all the non-CS (i.e. continuous/non-discrete) mathematical techniques required in my career. Highly accessible. It's a little too terse in places but I prefer this style of presentation over the insane long-form verbiag…
It is a fantastic book. It isn't (only) a reference book though. For me it was the best way of learning the maths used in my physics degree. The book has many worked examples, and the extensive end-of-section questions have the answers in the back of the book (for every 2nd question). This means you can learn by "reading then doing", and see if you have got the answers right - something many textbooks lack. When I tr…
It got me wondering...suppose there were a website for autodidacts in math and similar topics? Something where people could post and discuss their answers to exercises. It'd solve the whole problem.
Would textbook publishers sue?
Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm employed as a Software Engineer now but my degree is in ECE. The engineering curriculum at my university (Rutgers) was extremely math intensive. I didn't take a whole lot of software classes but I'm glad I did take all that math. I think it's dishonest to call yourself a Software Engineer and not have an engineering degree. Semantics, but I earned the title.
I understand where this feeling comes from. You worked hard to earn what is (or what should be) a title with prestige: engineer. I too worked hard to earn degrees in engineering. I try to live up to that title every day, and I'm sure you do, too. But my years of engineering experience have shown me that the title "Engineer" is really more about how you approach problems and what you do to solve them and less about de…
However, I still think it's wrong for people who don't exhibit these qualities to call themselves an engineer. If you make sick beats on your macbook, that's great. But don't call yourself a beat mix engineer.
Edit: Thought of some reasons It's similar to the "doctor" title. You can be the worlds greatest doctor. Self-taught, you can do everything from intubation to surgery. However, you're still not a doctor. You practice medicine. Why? There's things that you can only learn from someone who is more skilled than you, and who is skilled at teaching. That's what a professor is (simple definition). They are an authority on their topic and are the best place to learn from. They teach things that books don't cover. They have experience. They can tell you when you're wrong, and unlike a book can teach you the most current standards and techniques.
Another point is the completeness of education. Your coworker, does he know vector calculus? Linear algebra? The forward-active voltage for a BJT? Maybe. But there's no guarantee he does. A degree from a certified university guarantees that you know the salient points of your field (not always true, but for my argument it is). If you don't have a degree, there's no guarantee. And this knowledge is important.
Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
In real life, a software engineer can finish his studies and get a job with only a tiny knowledge of math, in every country, regardless what the curriculum says...
Tell that to the HR guys or the order institution that validates university degrees and who is allowed to sign projects.
And, "validated university degress" or not, I doubt a fizz buzz interview would have much different results in your country as opposed to the US:
Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
#87What I understood after studying CS for over 10 years at a few universities regularly ranked highly at ACM ICPC is that math is unnecessarily obfuscated to most people. There is even an excellent book "Concrete Mathematics" from Stanford that tries to bring fun back to math instead of drying people with some formal stuff without explaining how people over the centuries got to that structure. I honestly believe math l…
All that said, I think there are a number of misconceptions here.
First, mathematicians invent new languages all the time. That's the point of definitions, otherwise we'd be using sets to describe everything. The problem is, you first have to understand the concept well in order to apply suitable definitions. Think probability before Kolmogorov.
Second, Turing machines are a formalism to introduce you to the theory of computation because they are the simplest (or close to it) thing that can compute in the current sense of the word. Once you learn how TMs work, pretty much everyone just accepts them as a given and deals at a higher level.
Third people are trying to read Mochizuki's proof, but it is very hard. He basically invented his own way of doing things and so to understand his proof you first need to understand his methods. It's understandable that professional mathematicians with their own careers and areas of research find it hard to read the ~1000 pages of dense mathematics (proof + prior papers) to understand what is going on. Most people probably haven't read 1000 pages of math in their life, and it takes a while to come to terms with it no matter how smart you are.
Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
#88This topic comes up every so often. I think my previous comment applies here [1]: I started a Math degree after 16 years of programming without any Math beyond high school (the highest being high school calculus). Most of my work as a software developer didn't require any "higher" Maths. Once I began studying math, including Modern Algebra, Analysis, Graph Theory, Category Theory, etc., I realized I understood many t…
I'm in a similar boat as you. I went up through Calculus in school and hated it. Around 5 years ago I developed a strong interest in learning relevant applied math and have been enjoying it since. Some things I'd add: 1) Math is fun! If you have the aptitude and disposition to enjoy writing software you'll love working out math problems. They're little nuggets of mental stimulation that you can work on with just some…
This has been my biggest realization as I started learning more math. What before seemed very arbitrary and unrelated becomes much more interesting and exciting once you have a bit of background. Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to get people to see the fun in math until they already know quite a lot of it... this was my experience at least, and seems to be pretty common among people who didn't gravitate towards math immediately.
Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The range of problems I could tackle as a programmer was limited by math. It turns out this was partly true. Would you mind expanding on this? I've often thought about going back to school for a math degree, or at least for the core degree courses. Did functional programming, particularly in a pure language like Haskell, become easier to reason about once you had studied Category Theory in depth?
You can actually go the other way around, from functional programming to mathematics: http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jve/HR/
Re: A Software Engineer’s Adventures in Learning Mathematics
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a fantastic book. It isn't (only) a reference book though. For me it was the best way of learning the maths used in my physics degree. The book has many worked examples, and the extensive end-of-section questions have the answers in the back of the book (for every 2nd question). This means you can learn by "reading then doing", and see if you have got the answers right - something many textbooks lack. When I tr…
I see a lot of complaints in amazon reviews about the lack of answers making self-study difficult. It got me wondering...suppose there were a website for autodidacts in math and similar topics? Something where people could post and discuss their answers to exercises. It'd solve the whole problem. Would textbook publishers sue?