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Mathematicians are. They couldn't tell if Fermat's last theorem was solvable in a day, or a year... or not by the efforts of many of the world's greatest minds
by xiaoma 15y ago
Mathematicians are. They couldn't tell if Fermat's last theorem was solvable in a day, or a year... or not by the efforts of many of the world's greatest minds for centuries.
- gruseom 15y agoAgreed. Math is art with proofs. Or formalized imagination. Or something. It would be significant if that's the closest thing to what we do in software. (Obviously, math and computing are close as theoretical disciplines, if not overlapping totally, but that's not the same question.) Is there any kind of construction or engineering that comes closer? Because those are the analogues people have mostly (and largely unhelpfully) turned to when trying to understand how software projects work. People say "engineer" when they mean "programmer"; they never say "mathematician".