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Math can be useful, but it doesn't need to be to be worthwhile. That's the point I was trying to get across. (Based on my screen name you can assume I'm a mat

Math can be useful, but it doesn't need to be to be worthwhile. That's the point I was trying to get across. (Based on my screen name you can assume I'm a math fan) And for many programming and sysadmin tasks, the theory of computer science (and math of proofs) isn't necessary. That said, other than the information systems sequence I took, it is the theory classes that have held well over time. Thinking about "What might make this slow?" is very tough, and the solution is frequently figuring out O(n^2) bottlenecks rather than just a tight hack in the language at hand.

moron4hire 13y ago
I don't know any sysadmins who even have degrees, let alone in computer science. And I think you're short-changing the math side of it. Want to figure out who to suggest friends to each other in a social app? That's an influence graph over email addresses, game theory and linear algebra. Need to draw a best-fit curve over a graph of data? That's linear algebra and geometry. Need to be able to draw things on a map? That's more linear algebra and some multivariable calculus. Writing just basic CRUD apps for corporate clients? They're likely eventually going to want metrics on their data, and that's going to be statistics. They'll probably be terrible at math, too. You'll need to hold their hands and tell them what they want, because the stuff they suggest will be either worthless, meaningless, or impossible to determine with the current data set. Need to explain to a client why you need to take a week to implement a specific path finding algorithm rather than "just brute-forcing it" now (whoever the hell taught them the phrase brute-force should be shot)? You better have such a good grasp of CS that you can teach it better than it was taught to you, because if your experience was anything like mine, regurgitating what they gave us on Big-O notation is not going to cut it. Think you can get by using other people's code doing all this? Good luck. More often, I've found the shit people post online is full of logic errors. You at least need to know the math well enough to evaluate the results of the code. There has not been a single project I have ever done that would not have benefited from me knowing more math. The more math I learn, the more I can't believe I did without it before.

moron4hire 13y ago

I don't know any sysadmins who even have degrees, let alone in computer science. And I think you're short-changing the math side of it. Want to figure out who to suggest friends to each other in a social app? That's an influence graph over email addresses, game theory and linear algebra. Need to draw a best-fit curve over a graph of data? That's linear algebra and geometry. Need to be able to draw things on a map? That's more linear algebra and some multivariable calculus. Writing just basic CRUD apps for corporate clients? They're likely eventually going to want metrics on their data, and that's going to be statistics. They'll probably be terrible at math, too. You'll need to hold their hands and tell them what they want, because the stuff they suggest will be either worthless, meaningless, or impossible to determine with the current data set. Need to explain to a client why you need to take a week to implement a specific path finding algorithm rather than "just brute-forcing it" now (whoever the hell taught them the phrase brute-force should be shot)? You better have such a good grasp of CS that you can teach it better than it was taught to you, because if your experience was anything like mine, regurgitating what they gave us on Big-O notation is not going to cut it. Think you can get by using other people's code doing all this? Good luck. More often, I've found the shit people post online is full of logic errors. You at least need to know the math well enough to evaluate the results of the code. There has not been a single project I have ever done that would not have benefited from me knowing more math. The more math I learn, the more I can't believe I did without it before.