@Stinger007 is right. Only 0.01% of developers have ever used actual ‘hard’ math in programming. If you do not work for a hardware company making a very specific thing e.g. a capacitor etc it is almost next to impossible to utilize this knowledge
The only place I can say I have used ‘hard’ mathematics is in some visualization project I did for a client and even then that was basic statistics.
I have contributed patches to one of the biggest web framework and even there hakuna any complex math. I have also worked with someone in my former company to contribute much of the socket programming logic on a new language since our company used to be a big commercial sponsor and even then hakuna much complexity. It’s just complex logic of mostly checking threading and memory allocation. Don’t get me wrong, it is EXTREMELY complex and challenging only that it is mostly logic based and not exactly huge mathematical problems.
As a programmer, you will most always work with established algorithms(all the math has usually been done and established here), then libraries based on these algorithms, then wrappers around the same libraries etc. While it is good to understand the foundation of computer science and logic you definitely will never used calculus etc. They are just an integral part of comp science theory.
What is ‘real programming’?
You sound like one of those people that did an ‘IT or is it ICT?..LOL’ course and now work as a sales man or ‘head of ict…hehehehe’ for some ‘enterprise application’ with a self inflated sense of knowledge but have no working knowledge of anything other than what they read on blogs
Hehehe…This is true. But almost all apps being made in Kenya are basic CRUD apps with few users hence programmers would never really have to figure out such issues since scaling isn’t such a big factor in the local market
@grandpa thanks!!! The guys yapping here don’t know what they are even talking about.They just pretend to know coz they have watched so many Tech Series Movies but they haven’t even written a “hello” program.
At times we confuse what education is all about, I think its mostly for training and testing individuals, an individual who grasps calculus or statistics might be better at problem solving than say one who can not grasp the same, and so education seeks to filter out and provide a system that evaluates individuals best suited for certain environments.
That said, I thought maths was not important in computer systems till I worked on a gis application with some guys from majuu, thats when I knew kuna tofauti ya guys wa ku code and guys wa problem solving. Its always good to pay attention and try ones best to understand those maths courses
Its true locally most programmers don’t use much maths, but try develop a basic timetable application, and maths comes in very handy, sometime back I needed a system that did some basic resource allocation to help in running a ka small clothes biashara I do, something to look at past sales, and production and come up with projections that would help me know how much to invest and also allocate different tailors different tasks based on their past timelines. One can tackle this in the crud way, a hit and miss system where you put in your ifs and whiles and try force the solution, or one can sit down and do some maths and come up with the proper algorithms for the system, the maths route is always better, saves time and gives a more accurate system.
I’m not a programmer but I know a software that needs those features. Matlab, R, Mantle. People who program with those are usually not software engineers
you dont have to go that far, most applications that involve stuff that change over time, there is always a need to optimize the same, a resource allocation application for example, or an application which can be used by a shopkeeper to track the customer trends and make sales optimizations, especially since I see most supermarkets have loyalty cards.
I meant matlab is complex maths, I was giving more basic software examples that need more than basic maths to develop - I agree analysis trend whether one is looking at sales trends, customer package delivery e.t.c more advanced maths concept are involved.
My point was that, even with seemingly basic applications, advanced maths comes into practice, but again depends on what one understands with complex maths, it might mean different things to a mathematicians or a physicist as compared to an economist or programmer
Wadau…i come from a remote and dusty village deep in west pokot …computers nazionanga nikipita tu but nko na swali…
How is programming related/connected with electricity current…or is programming connected to electricity current?
You use calculus and others if it’s part of the solution. If you are writing a data entry/retrieval system(most commercial apps really boil down to that), you don’t need calculus or any major numerical heft in the application. But if you are writing a compression algorithm or weather derivative application, then you are definitely going to find more use for certain types of math.
I view the stuff you learn in college much the same way you would things like boiler plate code in a framework. You can get by without knowing its internal workings. But once in a while, your knowledge of the workings can mean the difference between months and lines of code or a simple implementation of an interface.
Softwares are a compilation of instructions, sio?
These instructions and the data associated with it is represented in the form of two numbers, 1s and 0s for easy interpretation and economy on space. For the actual data transfer, electric currents are used as the means where on/off state is synonimous to the 1s and 0s of the actual data.