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I 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
by tarkin2 3y ago
I 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.