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> You’re right, programming isn’t math. But when someone says this, chances are it’s a programmer misunderstanding mathematics Or a mathematician misunderstand

by vorg 12y ago

> You’re right, programming isn’t math. But when someone says this, chances are it’s a programmer misunderstanding mathematics Or a mathematician misunderstanding what's generally known as "programming" in the real world. The vast majority of programmers write webpages in something like PHP or Rails. 10 years ago it was Excel macros and VB. These are often customer interaction tasks where programming is incidental, but the workers doing these jobs quickly called themselves Software Developers or Javascript Engineers. > Sure, you don’t need to know how to build a car to drive it Just as car building/repair and car driving have evolved into 2 separate tasks, so have math-based programming and non-math programming. The separation occurred because there were many people who wanted to program things but didn't want to learn math. The non-math programmers vastly outnumber the math-based ones.

SomeCallMeTim 12y ago
>The non-math programmers vastly outnumber the math-based ones. At some level I'd love to have a different word for what I do [1] that distinguishes it from web or other kinds of programming. When I talk to someone who has only encountered web developers and I say I'm a programmer, and they say "Yeah so is my uncle! He does HTML!", it feels like they really, really don't understand. Like I've said "I design Tesla electric cars" and they've responded "My uncle assists mechanics in a shop that repairs VWs!" [2] But at some level it's just my ego talking, so it might be best to just take the ego hit as a lesson in humility. ;) [1] I do native C/C++ code on multiple platforms including optimization for real-time performance, as well as high speed server optimization, system security analysis, and cross-platform video game development. Not math-heavy, precisely, but still far more skilled than basic web development. I also create the occasional high-performance web page, so I can compare directly. [2] With no aspersions on assistant mechanics, but it's a VERY different job.
pessimizer 12y ago
>The vast majority of programmers write webpages in something like PHP or Rails. The vast majority of programmers write webpages? I seriously doubt it.

by vorg 12y ago

SomeCallMeTim 12y ago

>The non-math programmers vastly outnumber the math-based ones. At some level I'd love to have a different word for what I do [1] that distinguishes it from web or other kinds of programming. When I talk to someone who has only encountered web developers and I say I'm a programmer, and they say "Yeah so is my uncle! He does HTML!", it feels like they really, really don't understand. Like I've said "I design Tesla electric cars" and they've responded "My uncle assists mechanics in a shop that repairs VWs!" [2] But at some level it's just my ego talking, so it might be best to just take the ego hit as a lesson in humility. ;) [1] I do native C/C++ code on multiple platforms including optimization for real-time performance, as well as high speed server optimization, system security analysis, and cross-platform video game development. Not math-heavy, precisely, but still far more skilled than basic web development. I also create the occasional high-performance web page, so I can compare directly. [2] With no aspersions on assistant mechanics, but it's a VERY different job.

pessimizer 12y ago

>The vast majority of programmers write webpages in something like PHP or Rails. The vast majority of programmers write webpages? I seriously doubt it.