4 ms·

Mathematics. Its Probably just another fad that will prove worthless next year, but I'm jumping on the band wagon for now.

igotsideas 7y ago
Just for the sake of learning math or are you targeting something?
oneepic 7y ago
IMO 1) it's already been a fad for a while, and 2) if you're talking about higher-level math (Lie superalgebras, differentiable manifolds, and other big words...) most of it has been and still seems to be impractical (read: worthless) for general programming.
- Tainnor 7y ago
  Differentiable manifolds seem to lie at the core of differentiable programming which is supposed to be hot stuff in ML right now. Not sure about Lie superalgebras, but finite fields and elliptic curves are useful in cryptography, homotopy seems to find some application in type theory, category theory (or at least abstract algebra) seems useful for languages with ADTs etc. Not saying that you need to know the theory in order to be able to use all of that (probably most people don't, or at least only the most superficial parts of it), but there are enough applications if you take a close look (and then there's all the obvious stuff: graph theory, numerical analysis, optimisation, etc.) I would say, though, that more that the concepts themselves, it's useful to have some modest mathematical maturity, i.e. you know how to formally prove something (even if you don't use it often), you can read a paper, you can digest abstract definitions, etc.
- inimino 7y ago
  Programming is applied mathematics.
jointpdf 7y ago
>Probably just another fad that will prove worthless next year Sorry, my humor detector is a little out of tune this morning. This is sarcasm right?
- quelsolaar 7y ago
  Yes
Tainnor 7y ago
I'm biased because I'm a mathematics student, but I really think that not enough people give maths the credit it deserves. Here's a good blog post about this: https://j2kun.svbtle.com/programming-is-not-math-huh https://j2kun.svbtle.com/programming-is-not-math-huh

igotsideas 7y ago

Just for the sake of learning math or are you targeting something?

oneepic 7y ago

IMO 1) it's already been a fad for a while, and 2) if you're talking about higher-level math (Lie superalgebras, differentiable manifolds, and other big words...) most of it has been and still seems to be impractical (read: worthless) for general programming.

Tainnor 7y ago
Differentiable manifolds seem to lie at the core of differentiable programming which is supposed to be hot stuff in ML right now. Not sure about Lie superalgebras, but finite fields and elliptic curves are useful in cryptography, homotopy seems to find some application in type theory, category theory (or at least abstract algebra) seems useful for languages with ADTs etc. Not saying that you need to know the theory in order to be able to use all of that (probably most people don't, or at least only the most superficial parts of it), but there are enough applications if you take a close look (and then there's all the obvious stuff: graph theory, numerical analysis, optimisation, etc.) I would say, though, that more that the concepts themselves, it's useful to have some modest mathematical maturity, i.e. you know how to formally prove something (even if you don't use it often), you can read a paper, you can digest abstract definitions, etc.
inimino 7y ago
Programming is applied mathematics.

jointpdf 7y ago

>Probably just another fad that will prove worthless next year Sorry, my humor detector is a little out of tune this morning. This is sarcasm right?

quelsolaar 7y ago
Yes

Tainnor 7y ago

I'm biased because I'm a mathematics student, but I really think that not enough people give maths the credit it deserves. Here's a good blog post about this: https://j2kun.svbtle.com/programming-is-not-math-huh https://j2kun.svbtle.com/programming-is-not-math-huh