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Adam Smith's words about specialization apply to programming too. One of the best places I ever worked, I sat right next to a guy doing computer vision algorit
by davidw 7y ago
Adam Smith's words about specialization apply to programming too.
One of the best places I ever worked, I sat right next to a guy doing computer vision algorithms. He had a PhD, and was extremely smart and knowledgeable and fun to talk with.
He also wasn't the most... practical programmer, and I was able to give him a variety of suggestions about how to improve his code, and of course I had ideas about data modelling and web programming that he didn't know much about.
Neither one of us knew much about the details of the firmware, or the optics (mirrors and lenses and such) that another colleague was working on.
I guess the point is that for some of us, the point is that we're probably not good candidates to become domain experts, but knowing enough to find help is probably a good move.
- kragen 7y agoNot learning math because it's not what you want to specialize in is self-defeating. It's like not learning to read and write, or save money, or communicate with other people, because it's not what you want to specialize in. Math isn't a domain. It's the technique of abstraction we apply to any domain to make it tractable for computers, and it's the technique of reasoning we apply to any domain to figure out where our thinking has gone wrong. At least, any objective domain — except in rare cases, math isn't that useful for figuring out why your wife feels you don't love her anymore. But for you to program something on a computer, someone needs to mathematize it first. This can be done well or badly.