I tanked at maths at school. I have no formal education after school. I don't know how or when I learnt recursion, but learn it I did. There are a few other thi

I tanked at maths at school. I have no formal education after school. I don't know how or when I learnt recursion, but learn it I did. There are a few other things I learnt since then, like breadth- and depth-first tree traversals, shortest paths and so on. A lot I learnt from examples I found online. A lot of it I figured out myself. I can't even articulate how I do a lot of the things I do, but I do them. And they work. That said, a lot of the higher-level stuff I learnt the hard way, like the difference between tiers and layers. That's abstraction. And it's why I disagree with Keith's post in general, and this comment in particular: "...mathematics was the only subject that gave them that experience..." I don't need maths for 99% of what I write. [Edit] I don't dispute that I'm doing it (mathematics). I do dispute that an expensive maths education is a requisite for good code. Good of course is an interesting word - there's a difference between the best architecture, the right architecture, and a successful architecture. All can be termed as being "good" architectures, but no amount of maths is going to teach you the difference.