51–60 of 465 posts
In small peer groups (“pods”) that debug and learn together, communication becomes a core skill—and that can actually change how math skills are applied and developed. Language doesn’t just support learning; it reshapes the process.
This has the effect of making programming easier, but don't confuse it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Makes sense to me; I've always been a naturally good English speller. My brain just knows how to store and retrieve this type of data, which has a high correlation with e.g. CLI interfaces and their idiosyncratic command structures.
I can’t decide if you’ve cheekily included the classic homophonic there-error. This isn’t technically an issue with English spelling, but I think you intended to communicate that CLI interfaces have idiosyncratic command structures, not that they are idiosyncratic structures themselves. If I’ve been taken in by pedant-bait, I apologize.
English majors.
Programming education should have more humanities such as writing, sociology, epistemology and design, and not nearly as much maths.
How much math is in a typical CS program these days? Calc 1-3 (maybe 3, varied by school), Linear Algebra, Statistics (inconsistent across programs), Discrete were pretty much it when I was in school 25+ years or so ago. That's only 4-6 courses depending on the university, though some where the CS dept was more strongly associated with an engineering college might have added Diff Eq and others. (I got interested in C…
Yeah, I never thought this made sense, but so many people did; and, I always hear people on Slashdot talking about how programming IS math. None of that has been my personal experience, and I'm coming up on 21 years as software engineer. Discrete was the ONLY math course that I really enjoyed and did well in the first time around. For me, this always made sense.
Good code doesn’t just solve a problem, it solves it in a way that’s readable and modular. I think the problem-solving part of coding requires math skills, while the organization part requires writing skills. The organization part affects the problem-solving part, because if you write messy code (that you can’t reread once you forget or extend without rewriting) you’ll quickly get overwhelmed. Writing large math proo…
After I started my PhD program in CS/AI (late 90's), one of the faculty told me that the GRE verbal score was thing on the application most predictive of student success in the program. Of course, most applicants had perfect or near perfect GRE math scores, so there was no predictive power there. But the application also included the GRE subject test, transcripts, and letters of recommendation.
Makes sense that verbal ability would line up more with success in CS, especially when math scores are already high across the board. A lot of programming leans on language-type skills: reading and understanding code, navigating docs, naming things clearly, writing maintainable logic etc. The field probably does itself a disservice by overemphasising math. That framing can push people away who might actually do reall…