This sounds obvious. To me it seems the majority of developers hardly use any math.
The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)
91–100 of 465 posts
Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)
#92I have found a fairly interesting correlation between people who are good at learning programming and people who are good at English spelling bees. Something about holding a lot of anecdotes and esoteric rule exceptions when performing an otherwise algorithmic process.
I had a CS prof who couldn't spell to save his life and caught a lot of good-natured flak about it from his students.
Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)
#93Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)
#94I wonder if this finding hold across programming languages. I suspect the conclusions would be different for people programming in APL instead of Python, for example.
And/or application domain. Lower level programming might lean more on the math side? Wasn't the modulus operator a common complaint about fizz-buzz?
Low level requires more discipline, similar to math, that's about it.
Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)
#95I did not read any mentioning of testing non-verbal IQ. Many math skills also depend on verbal IQ. Verbal IQ correlates strongly with academic performance and probably also with learning new programming languages. I personally have a much stronger non-verbal IQ than a verbal IQ. Often when I think about algorithms, it is all about abstract blocks moving around even before I have written a single line of code. I usually see multiple solutions in my head and often find myself being stuck because I cannot make a choice. I always takes some effort to code the solutions and weed out stupid bugs due to spelling errors mixing up varisbles, but then things work correctly.
Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)
#96Good 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…
What do you mean by math? Abstractions or calculations? The effort it takes me to do long division in my head matches the effort it takes me to follow some obtuse spaghetti code. See, I can get good and fast at long division in my head, but I may never understand the fundamental theorem of calculus. Some people are really good at mucking around garbage code (they have no choice, they get paid to), but what part of programming did they get good at? Obviously, some part of it, but nothing to write home about. Whenever I sense that I'm just getting practice at doing the equivalent of mental long division at work, that's when I always seek a new job. No amount of money is worth falling behind like that.
Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It was my grades in math that ultimately failed me out of my undergraduate CS program. My university had: Calculus 1, Calculus 2, Linear Algebra, Vector Geometry, Multi-Variable Calculus, Applied Combinatorics, Discrete Math, Differential Equations and maybe more that I don't remember. So many that CS majors could take one more math class and get a minor. Yeah, I never thought this made sense, but so many people did;…
25-year career as a programmer here.
I can count the times I've ever applied math past approximately high school algebra 1, on one hand. Period, in private life, in hobbies, at work. I'm not sure I've ever used any "college level" math, for anything at all.
I've, and other programmers I've known, gotten excited on the very few occasions anything even slightly mathematically-tricky came up, precisely because it almost never happens.
Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)
#98There is no such thing as a "language brain" or a "math brain" unless you show experimentally that those bunch of neurons can be grouped into two non-overlapping regions dedicated to "language" and "mathematics". Mathematics itself is a human-made formal language that can be bootstrapped from definitions and axioms of logics and set theory, which have to be given in human language first. Experienced mathematicians re…
The other thing I don't like about this framing is the implicit false dichotomy. The best programmers I've met often have strong language and math skills.
Poetry is the art of giving different names to the same thing. Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things. (Henri Poincaré)
It's basically being good at "naming things", in particular abstractions.
Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)
#99Interesting. I grew up most of my life overseas learning various different languages. Anecdotal, but most of the best coders I know are talented writers and often are multi-lingual.
Re: The language brain matters more for programming than the math brain? (2020)
#100There is no such thing as a "language brain" or a "math brain" unless you show experimentally that those bunch of neurons can be grouped into two non-overlapping regions dedicated to "language" and "mathematics". Mathematics itself is a human-made formal language that can be bootstrapped from definitions and axioms of logics and set theory, which have to be given in human language first. Experienced mathematicians re…
> There is no such thing as a "language brain" or a "math brain"
Tell that to the people who designed the study, the people that approved the study, and the people that funded the study.
At the end of the day, the study set out certain criteria for assessing certain skill types/competencies and divided the people by those well defined criteria. I think it’s pretty hard to argue against the idea that people might have at least some level of aptitude for different types of activity and skill.