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I was once asked casually by someone I had just met what are good resources for computer science. I started listing MIT OCW and was about to recommend a bunch o

I was once asked casually by someone I had just met what are good resources for computer science. I started listing MIT OCW and was about to recommend a bunch of math textbooks that I thought were relevant before I realized he was asking how to create a phone app. I would argue that there are large tracts of computer science that are indistinguishable from mathematics and so learning math is critical. I would argue in the affirmative for learning math for computer programming even though I agree that the utility is debatable. Software architecture is more akin to engineering or even construction...math might underpin those areas and may even be needed but often many people in those fields get by without deep math knowledge. Increasingly it's becoming more of a good idea to have some math knowledge with GPUs, neural networks, machine learning, etc. but as with many deeper mathematical concepts, they'll no doubt get "black boxed" into something more digestible for people who don't want or need a deeper understanding of the inner workings.

dgb23 5y ago
Someone who is building a phone app benefits very likely from modeling their data with relational algebra. Good fundamentals in that category will help the longevity and quality of an application more than anything else.
- iamstupidsimple 5y ago
  Great point. The advantage to learning CS concepts via maths is that it teaches you to think in a completely different, more abstract way. And because it's just 'maths', the skills you learn are widely transferable. My favourite example of this is graph theory, which you can find deep applications of just about anywhere in programming.
wheels 5y ago
> Increasingly it's becoming more of a good idea to have some math knowledge with GPUs, neural networks, machine learning, etc. but as with many deeper mathematical concepts, they'll no doubt get "black boxed" into something more digestible for people who don't want or need a deeper understanding of the inner workings. That's already happened. My wife teaches data science, including machine learning, and it's always surprising to me the extent to which modern industrial practice is about picking the right pre-coded tools from toolkits and combining them. Even though such would be up her alley (she has a PhD in astrophysics), in seven years of working in industry before teaching, she never had to translate from math to code (which I did a lot of earlier in my career).

dgb23 5y ago

Someone who is building a phone app benefits very likely from modeling their data with relational algebra. Good fundamentals in that category will help the longevity and quality of an application more than anything else.

iamstupidsimple 5y ago
Great point. The advantage to learning CS concepts via maths is that it teaches you to think in a completely different, more abstract way. And because it's just 'maths', the skills you learn are widely transferable. My favourite example of this is graph theory, which you can find deep applications of just about anywhere in programming.

wheels 5y ago

> Increasingly it's becoming more of a good idea to have some math knowledge with GPUs, neural networks, machine learning, etc. but as with many deeper mathematical concepts, they'll no doubt get "black boxed" into something more digestible for people who don't want or need a deeper understanding of the inner workings. That's already happened. My wife teaches data science, including machine learning, and it's always surprising to me the extent to which modern industrial practice is about picking the right pre-coded tools from toolkits and combining them. Even though such would be up her alley (she has a PhD in astrophysics), in seven years of working in industry before teaching, she never had to translate from math to code (which I did a lot of earlier in my career).