🚀 go-pugleaf

On 24 Feb 2018 15:42:54 -0400, Mike Spencer
<mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:

>
>JimP <solo...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On 24 Feb 2018 08:29:08 GMT, Jorgen Grahn <grahn...@snipabacken.se>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>>On Sat, 2018-02-24, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>>>> On 2018-02-23, hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com <hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Personally, I think all programmers, whatever their specialty,
>>>>> should have a solid background in algebra.  IMHO, if someone
>>>>> is weak in algebra, they'll be a weak programmer.
>>>
>>>That's the stance my university took, around 1990.  You didn't get to
>>>do computer science until after some hefty maths courses (where most
>>>of the students dropped off).
>>>
>>>> Better still, a solid background in logic.
>
>My post about the prof who meant to make a course in "computer
>programming" consist of "mumerical methods" wasn't meant to deprecate
>math as background for programming.  Most or all of the people in the
>course were majors in the sciences with attendant requirements for
>calculus, statistics and the like.
>
>In 1964, programmers weren't building GUIs, designing addictive phone
>apps or data collection scripts for web pages.  (What then passed for)
>big data -- payrolls, say, or policy holder databases -- were just
>getting off the ground, still on cards .  So the prof did have a
>point: If you went into engineering industry as a programmer, you
>might be asked to determine numerically, given blueprints and material
>specs, how much a 90 storey building would sway or aircraft wings
>wobble. Numerical solution of differential equations was the word.
>
>Notably, Atansoff's ABC was then more recent than the first public web
>server is today.  So the prof could be forgiven for wanting to teach
>the Rung-Kutta method instead of Fortran.  It just wasn't what the
>enrollees in the class were looking for.
>
>
>>> I think of it as having a talent for working within systems of rules.
>>> Maths is a good way to exercise that talent.  I suppose board games
>>> are too, but I'm a lousy player.
>>>
>>> But I'm not sure ... nowadays I tend to think of programming as a
>>> craft.  I never used much of my formal training, and some of the best
>>> programmers I've worked with had none.
>>>
>>>> Any programmer worth his salt should know about De Morgan's theorem,
>>>> whether he knows its name or not.
>>>
>>>I had forgotten the name, but yes.
>>>
>>>/Jorgen
>> 
>> I looked it up... never used it in any programming class, and never
>> used it to repair a computer. I had to take a math minor so I probably
>> had it in algebra. Don't remember it from the calculus classes I took,
>> I have gladly forgotten my calculus.

I wrote, but not what you replied to.