Good point regarding the math analogy, I feel it was a rather poor one now. But I feel that the difference is between knowing and understanding. You can know

Good point regarding the math analogy, I feel it was a rather poor one now. But I feel that the difference is between knowing and understanding. You can know how to get the browser to display a rectangle with the right copy/pasted html. But without discrete math there really is no foundation to understand the underlying algorithms. Without understanding it is impossible to know how to extrapolate those examples to solve different but similar problems, probably the most important skill a programmer can have. Teaching C before discrete math is like teaching english without a vocabulary. Sure you can understand the syntax. But without understanding algorithms or data structures you are going to be lost very quickly. You might not need monads for C - since it is such a primitive language. But try writing C without iteration or recursion.