As someone who spends time programming, I of course find myself in conversations with people who aren’t as familiar with it. It doesn’t happen all the time, but these discussions can lead to people coming up with some pretty wild misconceptions about what programming is and what programmers do.
- I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences. So, I thought it would be interesting to ask.
A lot people compleatly overrate the amount of math required. Like its probably a week since I used a aritmetic operator.
Sometimes when people see me struggle with a bit of mental maths or use a calculator for something that is usually easy to do mentally, they remark “aren’t you a programmer?”
I always respond with “I tell computers how to do maths, I don’t do the maths”
On the other hand in certain applications you can replace a significant amount of programming ability with a good undertstanding of vector maths.
We must do different sorts of programming…
Tbf, that’s probably because most CS majors at T20 schools get a math minor as well because of the obscene amount of math they have to take.
Negl I absolutely did this when I was first getting into it; especially with langs where you actually have to import something to access “higher-level” math functions. All of my review materials have me making arithmetic programs, but none of it goes over a level of like. 9th grade math, tops. (Unless you’re fucking with satellites or lab data, but… I don’t do that.)