How much math you need for programming (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#51

Post by roenxi » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 12:50 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #48

mattbit wrote: post #28

> Now what does does a mathematician do? He tries to understand nature and uses mathematics as a language to do that. I would argue that this is wrong. That's what physicists do, not mathematicians. Mathematics is about abstract ideas, which can live regardless of nature or application. Physics instead is about understanding nature. Most physicists use mathematics to do that, but that's just for practical reasons. Th…

> I would argue that this is wrong. That's what physicists do, not mathematicians. Notice that many mathematicians would not agree with you, here (but probably, a majority would). As the mathematician V.I.Arnold famously said, "mathematics is a branch of physics where experiments are cheap". So, yes, in the minds of lots of mathematicians, what they do is precisely to study and understand nature.

Even if a lot of mathematicians think math is about studying nature they are demonstrably wrong. One can do maths that has no known relation to physical reality, has no basis in physical reality or sits in direct opposition to how physical reality actually works. That is precisely the opposite of physics to say that "well, if I can imagine it it must be nature". So by counterexample, since the field of maths contains things that are anathema to the science of physics maths cannot be a branch of physics.

Math is the study of abstract patterns and those cannot be escaped. But just because individual mathematicians dedicate their lives to finding abstract patterns inspired by physics doesn't mean that either physics or math are branches of the other.

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#52

Post by blargmaster42_8 » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 12:51 PM UTC

All of it! Math is weight lifting for your mind, it makes you smarter.

Lack of math gives us Phyton script kiddies when we could have had far superior C++ developers

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#53

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #50

enriquto wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would argue that this is wrong. That's what physicists do, not mathematicians. Notice that many mathematicians would not agree with you, here (but probably, a majority would). As the mathematician V.I.Arnold famously said, "mathematics is a branch of physics where experiments are cheap". So, yes, in the minds of lots of mathematicians, what they do is precisely to study and understand nature.

In that sense, though, programming would be a branch of physics that's concerned with making brute-force experiments cheap (thus saving the mathematical work needed to find clever tricks to do that same experiment by manipulating a small bunch of symbols).

Well - that's engineering.

Physics is experimental model building of phenomena which are not yet understood and are being explored.

Engineering is experimental model building of phenomena which are mostly understood, albeit sometimes with some quirks and unexpected edge cases.

Applied math is the toolset used in both physics and engineering.

Pure math is the abstract and philosophical exploration of symbolic relationships within all of math.

Academic CS - Wirth and Dijkstra-style - is the tiny subset of pure math used to explore theories of computing.

Practical CS is mostly just relatively trivial puzzle solving using a combination of cookbook academic CS with a bit of invention and innovation with influences from user psychology, marketing, and business design.

The most academic and mathematical parts of practical CS is ML and AI, which are genuinely exploratory. The second most academic part is probably processor architecture, where you may be applying statistical modelling to cache design and instruction pipeline outcomes.

Most of the rest is pretty basic compared to engineering modelling - never mind academic physics.

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#54

Post by pc86 » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

> You want to learn computer programming, then learn computer programming. Do not flip through Math books, read whatever is written on a particular newsgroup (comp.lang.c, comp.lang.lisp for example).

I'm sorry but how long has it been since newsgroups were relevant? I loved them back in the day but it's absolutely not where a programmer noob should go in order to learn programming.

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#55

Post by jamil7 » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

A lot more than people make out, at least in my experience. There’s a lot of talk about how you don’t need maths or cs theory but to me this only seems true for certain areas or levels. For me its been especially true with performance, cs theory and maths can help you to know what and where to optimise and give you ideas on the how.

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#56

Post by amelius » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #53

TeMPOraL wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that sense, though, programming would be a branch of physics that's concerned with making brute-force experiments cheap (thus saving the mathematical work needed to find clever tricks to do that same experiment by manipulating a small bunch of symbols).

Well - that's engineering. Physics is experimental model building of phenomena which are not yet understood and are being explored. Engineering is experimental model building of phenomena which are mostly understood, albeit sometimes with some quirks and unexpected edge cases. Applied math is the toolset used in both physics and engineering. Pure math is the abstract and philosophical exploration of symbolic relation…

Speaking of Dijkstra, he famously refused the title "physicist" and instead chose to use the title "programmer".

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#57

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#58

Post by arnuld » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 1:40 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #54

> You want to learn computer programming, then learn computer programming. Do not flip through Math books, read whatever is written on a particular newsgroup (comp.lang.c, comp.lang.lisp for example). I'm sorry but how long has it been since newsgroups were relevant? I loved them back in the day but it's absolutely not where a programmer noob should go in order to learn programming.

Yes, you are right, in 2020 Stackoverflow and other forums have taken over. Usenet is no longer relevant (not 100% true, but you get the point). Web-based forums are the places where one learns now. Also, the documentation of different software, libraries and tools has improved a lot.

I wrote that blog-post back in 2014, that was 6 years ago. I learned programming from 2005-2008 and all of that was because of the help I got from the mentioned newsgroups. There used to be a few known names on USENET and everyone knew them and ask them for help. I really loved USENET. These days comp.lang.c is mostly filled with spam and comp.object died sometime ago. Life is about change.

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#59

Post by throw6537 » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #24

You need all the math for the domain. If you are in engineering, games, DSP, ML, then that can be a lot . At the same time some developers can go a whole career without ever (knowingly) using a floating point number. They work with web sites/services/databases/apis etc. But developers should at least know basic calculus, logic, and what what you need to grok basic algorithms and data structures. That part of math isn…

Meh, disagree. A bunch of developers I know don't know the Pythagorean theorem but they are crazy good (developers). It completely depends on what your job requires you to do. For some developers to be great, they don't need even middle school math.

Re: How much math you need for programming (2014)

#60

Post by mkl » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #48

mattbit wrote: post #28

> Now what does does a mathematician do? He tries to understand nature and uses mathematics as a language to do that. I would argue that this is wrong. That's what physicists do, not mathematicians. Mathematics is about abstract ideas, which can live regardless of nature or application. Physics instead is about understanding nature. Most physicists use mathematics to do that, but that's just for practical reasons. Th…

> I would argue that this is wrong. That's what physicists do, not mathematicians. Notice that many mathematicians would not agree with you, here (but probably, a majority would). As the mathematician V.I.Arnold famously said, "mathematics is a branch of physics where experiments are cheap". So, yes, in the minds of lots of mathematicians, what they do is precisely to study and understand nature.

I am a mathematician. Nature is of no consideration whatsoever in some fields of maths. But nature or applications to it are the primary focus in many other fields of maths. In still others, nature would be a source of analogies, or applications of a few special cases, etc. Muddying the waters, some mathematicians would expand the definition of "nature" to include completely abstract ideas - anything that feels "discovered", for example.

Mathematics is the study of patterns. Any kind of pattern you can imagine, in anything, including relationships between things. What things? Any things. That covers a lot!