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I think it's a bit superstitious how we think that being good at math means you'll be good at programming. I'm not complaining, because that superstition helped
by jordigh 9y ago
I think it's a bit superstitious how we think that being good at math means you'll be good at programming. I'm not complaining, because that superstition helped me. Like I said, my math degree did give recruiters an initial good impression of me. Other than that, I don't think it translates into much of a benefit when writing code. I have personally witnessed many mathematicians write the most atrocious code, myself included.
Also, if it really were about that kind of structured thinking, maybe just teaching chess to kids would be just as well.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoYes! Remember, FORTRAN survives because mathematicians still use it...
- Myrmornis 9y agoWouldn’t you say there’s a difference between structured thinking (say, a kind of breadth-first search of ideas with pruning) and abstract thinking (which allows a programmer to, say, identify the need for a Form class on the backend to model and process POST data)? Bad programmers will just keep writing similar code to process the POST data with no abstraction about what is being done and why. Related, mathematicians use lemmas and theorems to reuse thought.
- jordigh 9y agoI think the relationship is as tenuous as being a good cook or a good chess player. Coming up with a unique recipe for cake or a good strategy for checkmate is about equally comparable to writing good code.
- Myrmornis 9y agoOK, I don't think I agree. In the area I work in, writing good code isn't so much about coming up with a clever sequence of moves; a large part of it is being adept at modeling real life situations with abstractions in software, and being adept at manipulating and combining those abstractions, and seeing when and to what extent they can be used more broadly, and knowing how to assess whether the end product is correct to the required degree.