What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming • Hacker News Board

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#131

Post by joeclark77 » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 7:38 PM UTC

chiaro wrote: post #34

joeclark77 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "soft/social sciences" you mean real substantive disciplines like history, philosophy, civics, and the arts, I agree with you. Currently "social studies" in school is a bit of a trash bucket into which gets thrown every personal ideology and pet project that some teacher got her feminism or social work or grievance-studies BA in. It's the worst subject in most curricula, even worse than English. The problem is…

What kind of degree are you talking about when you say "social studies"?

I'm referring to "soft sciences" like social work, psychology, sociology, [grievance] studies, poli sci, etc, as opposed to the humanities: history, mathematics, philosophy, classics, fine arts, etc.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#132

Post by fapjacks » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 7:57 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #93

totalrobe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money management only really works when you make more than enough to afford the basics...half the population struggles just for housing, food, healthcare, and transportation.

Many of whom are burning piles of money on $75/month smartphones and television subscriptions (with HBO so they can keep up with the Jones' who are also underwater).

Yes, the luxury lifestyle of the dirt poor. Good thing states like Kansas have made it illegal to use food stamps for cruises. Nip that one right in the bud.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#133

Post by davidamarquis » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 8:14 PM UTC

parasubvert wrote: post #117

davidamarquis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get nobility from. This isn't the author's point at all. Obviously knowledge about different areas of knowledge can be of more practical benefit at different times. The point is that in the next few years knowledge of math will become relatively more valuable and programming relatively less valuable. Regarding the quote, it is a best a great oversimplification. Mathematicians have been interested in com…

"The point is that in the next few years knowledge of math will become relatively more valuable and programming relatively less valuable." Sorry, that's at best an opinion, and at worst, bullshit. There little evidence of this. This article makes an assertion, provides a few anecdotes.

I agree there is almost no content in this post. Reasonable cases could be made both for and against the point I think.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#134

Post by chiaro » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 8:19 PM UTC

joeclark77 wrote: post #131

chiaro wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of degree are you talking about when you say "social studies"?

I'm referring to "soft sciences" like social work, psychology, sociology, [grievance] studies, poli sci, etc, as opposed to the humanities: history, mathematics, philosophy, classics, fine arts, etc.

Not sure what you mean by grievance studies but most of those, besides being quite important, fit under the humanities label. Mathematics on the other hand, probably not.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#135

Post by McUsr » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 8:26 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #43

Delmania wrote: post #16

What the next generation really needs lessons in: - Humility - Empathy - Patience - Self restraint and control - Mindfulness/Awareness - Disappointment - Resilience - Communication - Listening - Learning - Financial independence and literacy - Critical thinking - Problem solving - Self acceptance Then we can focus on what area the person can best contribute in. Not everyone is going to suited for a job in programming…

I don't think you can teach useful levels of Critical Thinking without a solid understanding of Math, Science, and Human behavior. But, programming can also help people think more deeply about problems. There is this huge realization that computers and by extension reality does not care about what's in your head only what is. You can argue that Math has similar levels of precision, but once people start getting parti…

I don't know about critical thinking in general, or science, but you definetively need some math courses, in order to get the necessary problem solving skills to be able to come up with clever solutions. Some people are born with those skills, or think in a similiar way, so those people, doesn't need learn the ability of mathematical reasoning. Nevertheless, the mathematical reasoning is mandatory if you want to be an excellent programmer. Together with a lot of other skills. I am thinking about the skillset you get by solving excercises in Calculus. Having a solid understanding of Discrete Mathematics and Statistics doesn't hurt either, depending on your problem area.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#136

Post by parasubvert » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 8:43 PM UTC

davidamarquis wrote: post #133

parasubvert wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The point is that in the next few years knowledge of math will become relatively more valuable and programming relatively less valuable." Sorry, that's at best an opinion, and at worst, bullshit. There little evidence of this. This article makes an assertion, provides a few anecdotes.

I agree there is almost no content in this post. Reasonable cases could be made both for and against the point I think.

Yeah, I accept that.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#137

Post by fuzzieozzie » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 10:34 PM UTC

innguest wrote: post #107

fuzzieozzie wrote: post #40

Here's the challenge faced by strong students. At a recent science fair, a strong 8th grader presented a simulation where you could fly a rocket around a plant, with the ability to change gravity, thrust, etc. I asked if he had explored the math (since this was a soluble problem.) The answer "The math is too difficult - I do it numerically, much easier that way." There is great advantage in re-using the work of other…

I'm interested in this but I have no idea what you are talking about. What does "numerically" mean and how does it allow one to implement rigid body physics in a "much easier way" than using the known formulae?

Rather than solving Newton's equations for gravity (with initial conditions determined by the masses of the bodies, their position and velocity) he simply calculated the acceleration and a point in time .. advances time by a small bit, changes velocity (based on acceleration) and location (based on the velocity) by a small bit and then repeats (computersare good at doing the same thing iteratively). This is using a computer to numerically estimate differential calculus.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#138

Post by ThatMightBePaul » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 11:35 PM UTC

I agree the next gen needs Math. Not for the reasons in this article, though.

John Carmack's 2012 QuakeCon speech is almost a direct rebuke: https://blogs.uw.edu/ajko/2012/08/22/john-carmack-discusses-...

In reality in computer science, just about the only thing that’s really science is when you’re talking about algorithms. And optimization is an engineering. But those don’t actually occupy that much of the total time spent programming. You know, we have a few programmers that spend a lot of time on optimizing and some of the selecting of algorithms on there, but 90% of the programmers are doing programming work to make things happen. And when I start to look at what’s really happening in all of these, there really is no science and engineering and objectivity to most of these tasks. You know, one of the programmers actually says that he does a lot of monkey programming—you know beating on things and making stuff happen. And I, you know we like to think that we can be smart engineers about this, that there are objective ways to make good software, but as I’ve been looking at this more and more, it’s been striking to me how much that really isn’t the case.

Aside from these that we can measure, that we can measure and reproduce, which is the essence of science to be able to measure something, reproduce it, make an estimation and test that, and we get that on optimization and algorithms there, but everything else that we do, really has nothing to do with that. It’s about social interactions between the programmers or even between yourself spread over time.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#139

Post by nine_k » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 2:01 AM UTC

cousin_it wrote: post #82

strictnein wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a "modest effort"? And when did we have an economy based on a "modest effort"? Work has never been easier in the US than it currently is. Record number of office workers, minimal number of farmers, factory workers, and manual labor in general.

Take a look at the Beat Generation books. For these folks it was not just possible, but normal, to travel across the US and find a job in every town they stopped.

Did they make much money?

If you're ok getting about the minimal wage for some gardening, or house cleaning, or trash removal, you probably have good chances (e.g. you'll outcompete an illegal Mexican immigrant by just knowing the language well).

Machines increasingly obviate jobs that don't require qualification. On one hand it is nice because humans need to do less and less dirty, mind-numbing jobs. OTOH being a traveling beatnik sucks more and more.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#140

Post by rpcope1 » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 6:33 AM UTC

parasubvert wrote: post #6

Why place one body of knowledge in front of the other like this? Everything has to be a competition with some people. It's always been a mistake to believe math is somehow more noble than programming. Best explanation as to why comes from the preface of SICP by Abelson and Sussmann: "Underlying our approach to this subject is our conviction that ``computer science'' is not a science and that its significance has litt…

I think you made a false equivocation there--computer science in relation to programming is like geology in relation to ditch digging. Besides, math literally is at the core of all of our advancements as humans, and is probably going to be the differentiator for people in the future--kind of like degreed versus not degreed today. It is far more universal than programming, and in some respects high level mathematics may be one of the last things to be automated. If that isn't reason enough to consider of primary importance, I'm not sure what is.