A good programmer has to be a good mathematician. Is it true?
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A good programmer has to be a good mathematician. Is it true?
In four years of college I had one math class as a second semester senior and the only reason I took that was because I needed 3 hours for my GE requirements.
If you are going to be working primarily with financial systems, then a firm grasp of the mathematical concepts involved would help, but shouldn't be necessary given tight enough project specifications.
i said no,
as long as the brain is working in a logical way to get the result then the goal will be achieved.
David
Maths is a wide area, I guess logic, discreet maths and set theory all come in handy.
I would agree they come in handy, but I wouldn't classify them as absolute necessities.
Thanks for reply. I request other members to post their opinion.
Two programmers with similar coding skills, the one who has better mathematics knowledge usually (not always) can solve the problem quicker and better.
Generally, maths skills (combined with logic skills) help you to analyse problem better so it will help a lot in programming.
However, a mathematician may don't know how to do programming.
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It depends on what area of maths and what area of CS you're talking about. Theoretical CS relies a lot on mathematical proofs for things. eg. Kraft's Inequality for encoding information. Pathfinding algorithms such as Dijkstra's algorithm are all based on mathematical proofs. The area of maths that seems to relate most to CS is Discrete Maths.
I voted for logic as well, there are many people here who can't add (VisualAd) but whose programming skills are nevertheless satisfactory (VisualAd).
Besides, in Stargate Atlantis, an evil race of aliens known as the "Wraith" are good at programming, but not that good at maths because you can often see them asking a group of humans, "How many of you are there?" indicating that they cannot count.