Re: Dumbing down?

Jeff Rollin <jeffrey.rollin@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

In the last episode, on Thursday 24 May 2007 21:09, Charlton Wilbur wrote:

"JR" == Jeff Rollin <jeffrey.rollin@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

JR> A friend (who should know better than I) and myself both agree
JR> that an understanding of maths is necessary to be able to
JR> program.

JR> So why do so many introductory textbooks insist that it isn't?

1) Because they disagree with you and your friend, possibly because
you and your friend are wrong. "A friend (who should know better
than I) and I both agree that heavy objects fall faster than light
ones. So why do so many introductory physics textbooks insist that
they fall at the same speed?"

2) Because the kind of mathematics that is most useful in introductory
programming is not the algebra and calculus and geometry that most
non-programmers and non-mathematicians think of when they think
"mathematics," but combinatorics and algorithms, and if they say
"you must need math, but not the kind of math you're thinking of,"
they'll just confuse people.

Charlton


Well, yeah, it's a lousy metric. But after all, a computer really doesn't do
much more than add, subtract or compare two numbers - it doesn't understand
English, can't appreciate music, and wouldn't have a use for a jet engine.


Thats very true and why I think that 30 years ago, higher math skill did tend
to result in better programming. However, these days, very few people work at
that level. The 'programmers interface' has been abstracted quite highly. As
Charlton points out, much of what some would consider mathematics wouldn't even
be considered maths by others.

I did study discrete maths at Uni and although I have always enjoyed the
problem solving and clearer definitions/results of maths (compared to, lets say
english composition, critical analysis of novels, poetery etc), it wasn't
something that I would say came naturally to me. On the other hand, nearly all
the concepts associated with programming, like recursion, closures, analysis of
algorithms and big O etc, were amongst the easiest concepts I've ever studied.
At the same time, I found courses on cryptography, fractals and data
compression pretty hard going.

Since completing my degree and after over 20 years working in the industry,
mainly as a programmer, I've rarely ever needed to draw on anything other than
fairly trivial math skill. However, I've not been working for the NSA cracking
encryption or NASA programming flight controllers or for a hardware company
writing embedded software for their graphics cards etc.

Tim


--
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au
.

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