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I studied category theory for a while, and frankly it plays zero role in my day-to-day programming. It would maybe be a different story if I were writing librar
by kweingar 3y ago
I studied category theory for a while, and frankly it plays zero role in my day-to-day programming. It would maybe be a different story if I were writing libraries in Haskell or something, but as it is, it’s really not that relevant to me.
Programmers use monads all the time without knowing it, but there is little need to understand the deep math-y concepts or proofs that underlie them.
- tarkin2 3y agoI worry this is often the case. I like the idea of learning maths for maths sake. And I would love the time to do that. But knowing I have a limited amount of time, I often suspect a lot of people extolling the benefits of understanding the mathematical underpinning of concepts are more showing off and in love with their own understanding than offering real benefits to programmers.
- edgyquant 3y agoI think that depends what the math is they’re saying to learn, does it not?
- cubefox 3y agoBefore I learned programming, I thought it had a lot to do with mathematics. I mean both look pretty formal. I was surprised to learn that mathematics played hardly a role in ordinary software development. If you happen to write a physics simulation, sure, you need math, but that is because of physics, not because of programming being inherently mathematical. When I later learned more mathematics, I was also surprised to learn how informal everything is programming: Mathematicians use fancy symbols, but also ambiguous, idiosyncratic or inconsistent notation, and they always write proofs where a lot is left unspecified because the intermediate steps are assumed to be obvious. In software development it's the opposite, the compiler has to understand everything.