Getting paid to write software for 20 years. Full-time, professionally, for 12 or so. Been considered "the smart guy" several places (others' words, not mine).

Getting paid to write software for 20 years. Full-time, professionally, for 12 or so. Been considered "the smart guy" several places (others' words, not mine). Income's great. I couldn't do anything "harder" than week two or three of Calculus 1 math without doing some reading, and even that would just be stuff I could solve by rote. And some of it I couldn't (I don't remember how to find limits, really). I've used stuff from linear algebra like once or twice ever (bitmap work on Android is the only one I can recall—camera shit, basically) and don't remember a single useful thing from that, really. Graphs? I think I've actually written code that directly worked with graph structures for one project, ever. Got a rough idea of what can and can't be done and know what to look up, which 100% suffices for stuff I do almost, but not quite, never. Literally the only time I sweat this crap is when it's interview time. Otherwise, I recognize enough and have good enough google skills to find what I need. I'm still with-it enough that I could get actually-good at some of the math if I ever did find myself doing e.g. machine learning. Otherwise? Meh. I'll learn it when I need it. As far as I can tell outside a handful of positions that I am not gonna get hired for (too competitive and I don't got the pedigree for that, most of them require moving and I don't wanna), no one cares. Again, except in interviews when some companies decide you need to have a ton of stuff you have never used memorized. [EDIT] to be clear, I don't mean to knock people who are more inclined to play with equations & proofs than I am, nor to shit-talk the work in question, which is neat.