🚀 go-pugleaf

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.

-- 
Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada