I’ve always flunked at math; and knowing how intertwined programming is with math, I’m skeptical of my ability to learn how to code. Can someone be too dumb to learn programming? If it helps, I’m mostly interested in learning Common Lisp.
Title question first: yes, you absolutely can be too dumb to program.
But as others have mentioned, being bad at math isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, especially if you’re taking about the actual arithmetic part of math.
What turns out to be key to programming is breaking down a problem into steps and figuring out the logic to do what you want to do. The computer is going to do the actual arithmetic, but you’ll need to tell it what you want to do step by step.
I suck at math and believe that if you can think critically and solve problems, you can program. It is possible to learn how to break down a mathematical formula into its components and have the computer compute. You can’t proof your work on your own at first, but there are tools that can.
Depending on what you’re doing, you may even learn the math as you go like I did with game dev and vector math. Like any skill, it takes practice.
Yes. But are most managers too dumb to figure out that you can’t program? Also yes.
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Math knowledge is not essential; but really useful in programming as you’re trying to make the computer do calculations of some sort.
Someone could definitely be too dumb to code though.
Math is less important than logical thinking which often, but not always, goes with math skills. More important still is intellectual curiosity. Do you like solving puzzles? Do you like the feeling of breakthrough after a frustrating struggle figuring out how something works? Those will take you a long way.
Like with anything, you will not know if you are going to be good at it until you spend a lot of time trying and failing and learning. If you enjoy it, just keep doing it.
I think it depends what you want to achieve? I learned to program to let the computer do the math for me, it’s worked out pretty well so far. I admit I get jealous of the cool visuals, optimizations, and clearer algos people can build with their math experiences, but it certainly hasn’t stopped me from making useable webpages, apps and arduino projects.
I wish I could get my head around programming. I’ve tried learning from books, I’ve tried learning from codecademy, and all I can do is follow the lessons, I don’t understand how I’m supposed to turn all these lines of gibberish into a program that does something. The most common bit of advice I get is “Just make up a project! Find something that you want the computer to do, it’s easy and fun!” And I’m over here like… “OK, how?” It’s like someone pointing to a pile of metal and a welder and saying “Build something!” Sure, someone who knows how to weld can do that, but most people are going to need more information.
You need to pick a project to start out so you have a goal, then from there it’s just google searches for each individual part.
I started learning in High School because I wanted to create a game. I had learned a little bit of Java from a book my dad gave me, but I was kind of in the same spot as you at first where I didn’t know how to do anything other than follow along with the book.
But once I sat down with my goal to make a game, and just started Googling stuff, that’s when it started to click.
Python has easy syntax, so that might be a good place to start. You could google: “Python game library” and it would pull up something like PyGame. Then you could look up “Pygame tutorial” which would give you a baseline on how to set up a window, etc. If you have a hard time with Python fundementals, you could just google “python for loop” or “python functions”.
That’s pretty much what my learning process looked like: start with a goal, google how to get started, google each problem as it comes up. I still follow that same process to this day, and I have a CS degree now.
At the end of the day, it’s a skill just like anything else. Just takes practice. I don’t think anyone is too dumb to learn it, but it depends on how much you want it. If it’s not worth the effort for you then you probably never will.
Why not try simple scripts at first? You could write a little script in Bash, JS, or Ruby to create folders or text files. Besides the very basic stuff I did on the high school robotics team, my first programming project was when I worked as a print broker and we invested in a digital press. I needed a program to calculate the cost of a print job, so I learned a little BASIC and wrote a program on my TI-98 to do it for me. It would ask a series of questions (eg - paper cost, single / double sided, color / black and white, how many imposed on an SRA3 sheet, etc) and spit out the cost of the job.
As for how you use the code, say you write a ruby script; to run it, you’d navigate to the script directory in the terminal and type ./scriptName.rb to run it. If you’re using a compiled language, you’d compile it (your lessons would cover how to do this) and then you’d run the resulting binary the same way.
What I tell people is to find something you regularly do manually, and automate it. I download a lot of torrents, then need to rename the many many files so my media server knows what they are. That’s something that can be automated. A perfect project for someone who’s just learning to program.
80% of programming jobs will only require basic maths.
A lot of the time you’re glueing together libraries written by much smarter people haha
It’s more about logic than maths. People absolutely can find it too hard.
I have been programming for years, and although I did minor in math, I can only think of 2 times that I have ever needed any math beyond that of highschool algebra. And those were very niche one-off situations. As others have stated, logic is much much more important, and a good understanding of Boolean logic will take you MUCH farther than any other math related discipline. But even still, logic is, well… logical if you just think about it. You really don’t need to take any courses on it.
I think the main barrier for entry is that there are simply too many options and different paths to go down when beginning to learn. Also, there just aren’t too many really cool things you can do as a beginner that are truly interesting and will keep your attention. The typical “hello world” exercises are boring as hell and of course people aren’t going to keep being engaged when they’re bored.
That’s why I usually recommend beginners who want to learn to start with an Arduino, regardless of what their final goal language is. Generally speaking, once you learn one language it’s pretty easy to learn others, as the foundational knowledge is mostly the same i.e. variables, loops, functions, etc.
What I think is great about the Arduino is that your code produces a physical, tactile response. Usually one of the very first programs you write (which can be completed in probably 10 minutes by a beginner) is making an led flash something like “SOS”. This is leaps and bounds more interesting than something like “hello world” and will usually keep you interested and engaged much longer while learning the basics.
I started on an Arduino many years back after stumbling upon a Paul McWhorter lesson randomly on Reddit. After becoming pretty proficient with an Arduino, I transitioned over to JavaScript and started learning web development, and I’m now a full time engineer.
i would say no, as there can be programming you can begin that doesn’t involve math. what I would recommend is to begin your own project by looking to see what you can automate in your life.
when I was in middle school, I told a teacher I wanted to program when I got older, and she scared me because she said that involves a lot of math. at the time, I hated math, so I avoided programming completely. it wasn’t until I was 24 that I gave it a shot and was so upset at how misinformed I was. I wish I could turn back time, but oh well.
is there something you do at your current job that you think can be automated?
People equate maths to programming, but I think if it more as a creative, problem solving field. Most real world coding problems don’t have a precise single correct way to solve them; it’s more like architecting a building: you have multiple goals and a lot of freedom in how you achieve them and to what degree
Usually when people say “I suck at maths”, it means that they are bad at doing manual calculus. Maths is extremely useful in programming, but it’s absolutely not the same kind of math. I don’t think that the grade you had in math at school will influence in any if you will be good or bad in programming.
Find something you want to create in Lisp then do it! You will face problems, but you will always find solutions online and that’s how you will learn and good at this. Anyone can learn I think, it’s a matter of motivation like everything else, and having a goal helps a lot.
Is there a reason you want to start with lisp? If you’re like, intellectually incapable of complex languages, the simple one I’m familiar with is python, which works great for a beginner who doesn’t want to get into the nitty gritty of implementation. As long as you’re not developing for a business or similar, I doubt you’ll even notice there is an efficiency difference. IMO, the increased readability is tantamount to Python’s usefulness to newbies.
THIS!! Start with something simple like Python. I don’t think you need to be good at math to be a good programmer. If you understand the concepts of math theny you will be fine. I heard Rita Wilson say the other day something like “If you keep practising something you can only get better at it”. (not a direct quote) Find a Problem then solve it. That is the best way to learn.
