> There is a vast world of mathematical understanding available to programmers who don't like proofs. Mathematics is a deep net of knowledge, you can not just

> There is a vast world of mathematical understanding available to programmers who don't like proofs. Mathematics is a deep net of knowledge, you can not just somehow study "interesting functions" in isolation, only by systematically exploring the relevant areas and understanding the concepts you can apply it, and calculation is the easiest part most of the time. If you understand something clearly, you can prove it. If you can't prove it, you don't really understand it. It's that simple. Don't equate proofs with epsilon/deltas and Cantor sets. There are very practical theories developed formally that you can only study fruitfully if you are not afraid of proofs. Algorithms, probability theory, statistics, machine learning are all full of proofs, there is not much to calculate until a very late stage and it is very practical right from the start. A formal approach does not necessarily imply highly abstract concepts.