That's pretty sad. Programming and mathematics are normally things that go together, like burgers and beer. I can't imagine loving one and not the other. I do s

That's pretty sad. Programming and mathematics are normally things that go together, like burgers and beer. I can't imagine loving one and not the other. I do sympathise with the wish to see a practical application. I have a distinct recollection of an ah-ha moment for me, at about 15 years of age. We were being taught basic calculus. The idea was introduced that a function f(x) could be used to represent the yield of some industrial process. You put in x, you get out y = f(x). So far, so obvious, so boring right? But then came the cute part; If you can calculate the derivative of f(x), you get another function f'(x) which is the slope of f(x) for any value of x. Then to find the maximum yield you seek the value of x where f'(x) = 0, because the slope of f(x) will be zero 'at the top of the hill'. I guess it's a personal thing, but for me this fired my enthusiasm for both learning the various techniques for differentiation, and for equation solving. Then integration followed as simply reverse differentiation [amazing - one is the area under the graph - one is the slope of the graph - why should they be opposite ? Because maths is beautiful is the short answer - a universe of discovery is the long answer]. Around this point maths became fun, the work part evaporated. Later I got interested in computation because you can't always differentiate or solve equations analytically (with pure math), but you can do it numerically, to any desired degree of accuracy with a computer.