61
Mathematicians and software (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago by 3h5Hne7t1K@lemmy.world to c/programming@programming.dev
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It is often echoed that mathematicians make excellent software engineers, and that their logic-adjacent work will translate efficiently into coding and designing.

I have found this to be almost universally untrue. I might even say the inverse is true.

While I and many of my peers have capacity to navigate the mathematical world, it certainly is not what sets us (at least me) apart when designing clever algorithms and software tricks.

Point being: I dont think the property/trait that makes good programmers is mathematical literacy.

I would love to hear what others experience is regarding this.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] 3h5Hne7t1K@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Interesting. Im curious, what are some key areas of math that you think is the most interesting/useful for software engineering (that you would personally recommend learning)?

I will likely have some spare time in the following months and i currently plan to spend it on deepening my senses related to linear algebra and analysis.

[-] CmdrKeen@lemmy.today 1 points 10 months ago

Yeah, I think you're already on the right path with that, those are good basics for anything computer science related (and usually required classes if you take CS in college). Perhaps add Numerical Analysis to that list.

Also, Operations Research has some interesting optimization algorithms, and Statistics is useful for anything related to Machine Learning.

[-] coltorl@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

I majored in math and have so far a great career in software. I don’t think knowing math separates me out from CS grads generally. However, math majors largely chose to major in Math because we like problem solving. Plenty of CS grads major in CS because they are expected to. Being a passionate problem solver gets you pretty far.

this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
61 points (87.7% liked)

Programming

17314 readers
322 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
snowe@programming.dev
Ategon@programming.dev
MaungaHikoi@lemmy.nz