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Im always in awe when such basic maths makes the front page of Hacker news.
by Davidbrcz 7y ago
Im always in awe when such basic maths makes the front page of Hacker news.
- slowhand09 7y agoI think there is a probability P>0, that you overestimate the technologic and mathematical sophistication of YC audiences.
- lawik 7y agoI'm delighted. I've programmed since my teens but I never really enjoyed math and have mostly picked up what I need when I really need to. I think more in the ways of programming than in math, so this is a good way of helping me with the syntax. People come here from many angles. Mine was largely free of math. I gather yours wasn't.
- gumby 7y agoI upvoted this because I feel the same way, however I have a rebuttal. There are plenty of articles on learning hiw to learn but fewer on the process of learning what to learn (plenty of lists of “what you should know” though). If you’re just past the very beginning of learning something new, being exposed to stuff quite a bit outside your competency set can be valuable — if you can mostly grasp something then the stuff you can is pointers to expand your knowledge. While a fully advanced treatise is likely gibberish. I also come to HN for the more technical links but often read the comments even on basic articles like this as they may have interesting pointers. Also: I’ve been writing systems code for 40 years: bring up an os on bare hardware, write small real-time kernels, build high performance distributed systems, work on compilers, etc. I could probably write a (crappy) algorithms or datastructures textbook coz yes, I use a lot of that stuff. But quickly write a secure, reactive web front end for a simple CRUD app that let you browse a catalog? I would struggle. So one person’s obvious is another’s “no clue”.