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> it helps to be a systems-thinker, and to be able to zoom out and ask “what are we really trying to accomplish here.” Most of the time the elegant software sol

by orev 5y ago

> it helps to be a systems-thinker, and to be able to zoom out and ask “what are we really trying to accomplish here.” Most of the time the elegant software solutions come not from writing brilliant code, but from reframing the problem so that simple code can solve it. This is exactly what math as a subject in school teaches you. Other subjects can too, but math seems to uniquely challenge people to really bend their mind around concepts, as opposed to many other subjects which often turn into memorization tasks. I’m talking about stuff like algebra, statistics, etc., not basic adding and multiplication. What is reducing a fraction or using the commutative property to break a problem into smaller chunks, if not “reframing the problem”?

visarga 5y ago
Both are exact disciplines that rely on making tools and abstractions as a away to solve problems, knowing how to combine your skills to form new skills, because you are often in a novel situation that doesn't match experience.
boppo1 5y ago
>This is exactly what math... teaches you. This is more or less agreeable. >...as a subject in school... Maybe for a lucky few. My entire math career in school, from middle school through university, grades were based on homework completion. I even had one sadistic teacher who would grade a semester's homework twice. Imagine getting Bs on tests with no curve, but getting a D in the class. I remember in highschool and uni, that there were often one or two kids who would do the homework and then it would get passed around and copied by half the class. I would go so far as to say math-in-school was about successfully processing complex tasks without needing to understand them, as well as the value of teamwork & organization.
solarkraft 5y ago
> This is exactly what math as a subject in school teaches you Does it? My encounters with it at any place of formal education have all been about memorizing and practicing arbitrary operations. No intuition required.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Yes, every math curriculum teaches you to find the real problem instead of getting distracted by details. For example, you learn that adding together 5 apples with 7 apples is actually the same problem as adding together 5 cows with 7 cows. Math education was always about finding the core most pure representation of problems and learning how to solve those. That kind of thinking is what you need to understand to get good at programming.

by orev 5y ago

visarga 5y ago

Both are exact disciplines that rely on making tools and abstractions as a away to solve problems, knowing how to combine your skills to form new skills, because you are often in a novel situation that doesn't match experience.

boppo1 5y ago

>This is exactly what math... teaches you. This is more or less agreeable. >...as a subject in school... Maybe for a lucky few. My entire math career in school, from middle school through university, grades were based on homework completion. I even had one sadistic teacher who would grade a semester's homework twice. Imagine getting Bs on tests with no curve, but getting a D in the class. I remember in highschool and uni, that there were often one or two kids who would do the homework and then it would get passed around and copied by half the class. I would go so far as to say math-in-school was about successfully processing complex tasks without needing to understand them, as well as the value of teamwork & organization.

solarkraft 5y ago

> This is exactly what math as a subject in school teaches you Does it? My encounters with it at any place of formal education have all been about memorizing and practicing arbitrary operations. No intuition required.

Jensson 5y ago
Yes, every math curriculum teaches you to find the real problem instead of getting distracted by details. For example, you learn that adding together 5 apples with 7 apples is actually the same problem as adding together 5 cows with 7 cows. Math education was always about finding the core most pure representation of problems and learning how to solve those. That kind of thinking is what you need to understand to get good at programming.