Ask HN: Do programmers generally lack of math skills?

1 point·betimd··5 comments

Almost everyday I see and meet a lot of programmers (even good ones) that lack of math skills, but they've good career and perform well. How accurate is this hope you guys will answer here?

View on HN

You are correct, and this is unfortunate. "Any fool can write a loop," but sometimes it takes some basic math knowledge to realize that you don't need a loop. Or, for example, that you can iterate through a sequence of squares simply by growing the sum of the odd numbers (which, I think, could be a sensible interview question).

I am a fairly decent programmer with a good career but I'm not all that great at math. Not for the lack of interest, although tbh my interest in math developed after completing my formal education.

As for other programmers I know and have worked with I believe most of the good ones also had a good grasp of mathematics but there were also few like me.

So from personal experience I won't draw any relationship between math skills and programming.

Do you think if you'd have better math skills you'd be even better programmer?

I've never used math beyond basic arithmetic in nearly 30 years as a programmer. Went through three semesters of calculus, also linear algebra and statistics in college but have never used any of it professionally. Honestly at this point I could not do any of it without spending some substantial time on review.

What would you define as a lack of math skills? Programming is math so every programmer use math, some well, most not so. Some use applied math in their day by day work, most of us don't. But I bet that compared to the overall society, programmers knowledge in math are far above average.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com