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As someone currently studying math in a masters program, I am a huge fan of mathematics itself and of programmers learning at least the basics. With that said,
by timwiseman 17y ago
As someone currently studying math in a masters program, I am a huge fan of mathematics itself and of programmers learning at least the basics.
With that said, it is not necessary for a working programmer to know large amounts of math. I have known more than one programmer with a successful career that never studied any math beyond the required introduction to calculus and had long since forgotten most of that.
In short, I think the study of mathematics is very helpful to a programmer in both the general sense of improving their overall thought processes and in the specific of helping with certain types of problems, but it is not necessary for most.
- elblanco 17y ago>I think the study of mathematics is very helpful to a programmer in both the general sense of improving their overall thought processes and in the specific of helping with certain types of problems, but it is not necessary for most. This is true. Most of the absolutely best developers I've ever worked with were Math majors. The second best were Physics majors. They had long since forgotten most of their formal training, but they knew how to think about problems in the right way.