Ryan is an engineer in the Sacramento Area with a focus in Python, Ruby, and Rust. Bash/Python Exercism mentor. Coding, physics, calculus, music, woodworking. Looking for work!
I would say, they never hurt and they can provide valuable insights into problems that you might otherwise miss out on. But how necessary they are probably depends on what you are doing.
For web work, you can get away with less, because you are more focused on design, UX, networking, performance, event loops and data wrangling, which are all hard in different ways themselves, but are less directly tied to math.
For more algorithmic work, solving a more complex problem using graph theory, search algorithms, trees, etc., it is more important. It can help with the basic understanding of the methods you are applying and which algorithms may work best in a given scenario.
For data science, it’s not strictly necessary, but it really helps accelerate your learning if you can grasp and build on the mathematical and statistical concepts and not just memorize what libraries to use and what methods to call. It also helps you evaluate your results rather than blindly accepting them because the “algorithm” says so. This is getting more and more ethically important as more and more decisions are being made with heavy AI and machine learning and big data driven insights.
For lower level systems programming, at least a little number theory (binary, hex, and decimal representations of things and how to mentally convert back and forth) is critical. Luckily, while number theory is intimidating, it’s not super duper complicated at the end of the day if you approach learning it slowly and with the right examples. I’ve got a couple articles about that.
Lastly, if the domain you are in is math heavy, like software for physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, genetics, statistics, probability, etc., then you’ll probably want to have a bit of a grasp on that particular domain.
That’s all I can think of. My philosophy is that math always helps make you a better developer, but treat it like anything else we have to learn. Learn it as you need it or as your interest strikes, and don’t feel like an imposter if you don’t know everything right now. Just put it on your list to learn and watch some numberphile videos on YouTube in your downtime. 😁
Math is not necessary if you are a webdeveloper for example. But I absolutely disagree for datascience: without having a solid statistical and epistemological background in probability, I would forbid to hire you for that kind of job ;)
As a "webdeveloper" I have used math principles uncountable times. Maybe you are talking about wordpress users. I honestly think that anything that have the word developer in it, it is easier if you have a good math basis.
What type of scenario would typical web development work require math skills beyond the basics (i.e. what might be taught in a high school / secondary school)?
when I was working as a "web developer" with large scale systems, math skills come into play a lot more often than I would think. I have noticed that I use a lot of different types of math all the time (calc, stats, DM). Math skill also help when you are testing at big companies that want to ensure you understand how a lot of things work.
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I would say, they never hurt and they can provide valuable insights into problems that you might otherwise miss out on. But how necessary they are probably depends on what you are doing.
For web work, you can get away with less, because you are more focused on design, UX, networking, performance, event loops and data wrangling, which are all hard in different ways themselves, but are less directly tied to math.
For more algorithmic work, solving a more complex problem using graph theory, search algorithms, trees, etc., it is more important. It can help with the basic understanding of the methods you are applying and which algorithms may work best in a given scenario.
For data science, it’s not strictly necessary, but it really helps accelerate your learning if you can grasp and build on the mathematical and statistical concepts and not just memorize what libraries to use and what methods to call. It also helps you evaluate your results rather than blindly accepting them because the “algorithm” says so. This is getting more and more ethically important as more and more decisions are being made with heavy AI and machine learning and big data driven insights.
For lower level systems programming, at least a little number theory (binary, hex, and decimal representations of things and how to mentally convert back and forth) is critical. Luckily, while number theory is intimidating, it’s not super duper complicated at the end of the day if you approach learning it slowly and with the right examples. I’ve got a couple articles about that.
Lastly, if the domain you are in is math heavy, like software for physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, genetics, statistics, probability, etc., then you’ll probably want to have a bit of a grasp on that particular domain.
That’s all I can think of. My philosophy is that math always helps make you a better developer, but treat it like anything else we have to learn. Learn it as you need it or as your interest strikes, and don’t feel like an imposter if you don’t know everything right now. Just put it on your list to learn and watch some numberphile videos on YouTube in your downtime. 😁
"don’t feel like an imposter if you don’t know everything right now"
That was gold. (:
Math is not necessary if you are a webdeveloper for example. But I absolutely disagree for datascience: without having a solid statistical and epistemological background in probability, I would forbid to hire you for that kind of job ;)
Completely agreed. There are too many ways for data science to go wrong if you can’t think about how it works.
As a "webdeveloper" I have used math principles uncountable times. Maybe you are talking about wordpress users. I honestly think that anything that have the word developer in it, it is easier if you have a good math basis.
What type of scenario would typical web development work require math skills beyond the basics (i.e. what might be taught in a high school / secondary school)?
Anything that would require knowing about set/group theory, stats but then it depends on the project.
when I was working as a "web developer" with large scale systems, math skills come into play a lot more often than I would think. I have noticed that I use a lot of different types of math all the time (calc, stats, DM). Math skill also help when you are testing at big companies that want to ensure you understand how a lot of things work.