How much math you need for programming (2014)
> Now what does does a mathematician do? He tries to understand nature and uses mathematics as a language to do that.<p>I would argue that this is wrong. That's what physicists do, not mathematicians. Mathematics is about abstract ideas, which can live regardless of nature or application. Physics instead <i>is</i> about understanding nature. Most physicists use mathematics to do that, but that's just for practical reasons. They don't always take it for granted, there's a very famous article by Eugene Wigner on this: “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences”.<p>I think it's important to understand this. Sure, computer programming is not math. Physics is not math either. Mathematics is kind of a way of thinking, and mathematical language turns out to be very useful in describing and understanding nature and many other things. Computer programming theory stems out of mathematics, but I agree that everyday programming practice does not strictly require an in-depth math knowledge.<p>But it depends. One day you wake up and you want to solve a problem: sometimes you need programming, sometimes you need math, sometimes both, or maybe you need some business experience, psychology, whatever. We need different perspectives, I don't think we can compartmentalize these things any more.