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Forum » Can you still have a successful programming career if you're terrible at math?
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Thread: Can you still have a successful programming career if you're terrible at math?

post 1645360893 08-20-2021, 01:21 PM
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Can you still have a successful programming career if you're terrible at math?

Currently learning programming but I've never been good at math at all. Barely understood it in school. Is there hope for me?
post 1645361083 08-20-2021, 01:24 PM
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You dont specifically need math but if you find say algebra hard I dont think you will be great at logical spread out systems.

If you are good at design become a UI/UX guy.
libs gonna lib
post 1645361143 08-20-2021, 01:25 PM
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i think it comes down to how much applied effort you put into learning to program as its a language
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post 1645361213 08-20-2021, 01:26 PM
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Originally Posted By Dontknomyass2⏩
Currently learning programming but I've never been good at math at all. Barely understood it in school. Is there hope for me?
There is a lot of programming you can do without much math knowledge. Can always make various apps and the like, although you would be at a bit of a disadvantage.

Can never do game development or anything engineering based though.
post 1645361283 08-20-2021, 01:28 PM
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Yes, most programming jobs don't require math at all.
post 1645362213 08-20-2021, 01:40 PM
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Yeah I'm great at programming and automation but never got past calc 1 in school. It's not really about math it's more about understanding what you're trying to do, what inputs you need, how to quickly filter the data you need from a bunch of crap, and how to make sure your code recovers from errors with no / minimal intervention.
post 1645362263 08-20-2021, 01:41 PM
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Programming itself is fundamentally more about logic than math unless you're in an application space that requires advanced math.
post 1645362413 08-20-2021, 01:42 PM
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Originally Posted By ectoBgone⏩
Programming itself is fundamentally more about logic than math unless you're in an application space that requires advanced math.
This, all of the math will be done for you
post 1645362573 08-20-2021, 01:44 PM
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Math: Rules and logic
Programming : Rules and logic

So...do the math.
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post 1645362843 08-20-2021, 01:47 PM
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Don't really need to be that good tbh...yeah stuff like logic but it's better to have a grasp on discrete math
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post 1645363063 08-20-2021, 01:49 PM
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Math requires practice to be good so does programming.
post 1645364793 08-20-2021, 02:10 PM
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post 1645365753 08-20-2021, 02:24 PM
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post 1645366053 08-20-2021, 02:29 PM
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It requires competence at math and even then only because you have to be able to think logically/systematically, which math trains you to do. I never did anything beyond Calc 1 (or whichever one they teach integrals in - I forget) in college and was able to switch from accounting --> data analytics by self-teaching myself SQL/Python without any courses.

If you're good with Excel (i.e. thinks like nested IFs/advanced logical formulas come naturally to you), then you can do programming. I was always the guy in my accounting group that was godly with Excel and could find ways to automate analyses people do were typically doing manually, so I knew I'd do well at programming with practice.
post 1645366343 08-20-2021, 02:34 PM
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post 1645367003 08-20-2021, 02:43 PM
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post 1645367163 08-20-2021, 02:47 PM
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you'RE terrible at grammar too.


































and little details like this would have you tearing your hair out as to why your code wont do what you want.
post 1645367383 08-20-2021, 02:51 PM
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post 1645367603 08-20-2021, 02:54 PM
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There's such a demand for programmers these days that you can pretty much get hired and make a good salary if you have a pulse.


But success in programming is highly dependent on intelligence, and if you struggle with math it probably means you're stupid. There's levels to it and competence in mathematics is probably the best proxy for potential in computer science.
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post 1645369073 08-20-2021, 03:17 PM
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Originally Posted By monster0ultra⏩
Yes, be a sloot.
Big facts, the difference in hiring standards at big tech for male or female engineers is jarring.
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post 1645369383 08-20-2021, 03:23 PM
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If you want to be ********/netflix material, making 500k+ per year and solving hard problems then you won't succeed. Not even because you use advanced math in your day to day, but because the analytical brain that makes you good at math also makes you a good dev.

If you want to be a mediocre dev, barely cracking six figures you can squeak by. There's many small/medium sized companies that will hire you without doing a proper technical interview, and are almost impossible to be fired from.
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post 1645369603 08-20-2021, 03:28 PM
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Also odds are pretty good you'll eventually run into a problem that needs some advanced math or other more 'theoretical' compsci topics eventually in your career, that a library won't solve for you.

The 100k dev will just not solve the problem and won't even know there was a solution
The 500k dev will
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post 1645369703 08-20-2021, 03:29 PM
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You don't need to be particularly good at anything to be successful. You just have to do it and make something out of it and then hire better people that do it well


For instance when Elon Musk starred hiring engineers, they almost laughed at him and how sloppy and badly his code was. He didn't give a fuk and moved ahead full speed as always and got others to take care of the small stuff
post 1645370043 08-20-2021, 03:36 PM
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I've worked in programming and I'm terrible at maths, and I honestly feel it did hold me back somewhat. Not enough to stop me doing the job well, but enough to always make me feel I could have done it better. I think people good at maths are generally better with logic and patterns.
post 1645370073 08-20-2021, 03:37 PM
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Originally Posted By DSTEE⏩
You don't need to be particularly good at anything to be successful. You just have to do it and make something out of it and then hire better people that do it well


For instance when Elon Musk starred hiring engineers, they almost laughed at him and how sloppy and badly his code was. He didn't give a fuk and moved ahead full speed as always and got others to take care of the small stuff
At some level there's probably an inverse relationship between intelligence and how 'clean' your code looks like. Code I've seen from PhDs seems to always look like dogchit.

Check out the source code for the interpreter for the J programming language, it'll make your eyes bleed. But the men who created this are geniuses
https://github.com/jsoftware/jsource.../jsrc/ch.c#L17
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post 1645370233 08-20-2021, 03:39 PM
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Originally Posted By SaviorSelfJT⏩
Also odds are pretty good you'll eventually run into a problem that needs some advanced math or other more 'theoretical' compsci topics eventually in your career, that a library won't solve for you.

The 100k dev will just not solve the problem and won't even know there was a solution
The 500k dev will
Guess I gotta go back and learn math again if I want to be one of those 500k devs
post 1645372543 08-20-2021, 04:20 PM
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It doesn't require it but people good at maths generally find coding easier.
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post 1645372603 08-20-2021, 04:21 PM
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Originally Posted By Dontknomyass2⏩
Guess I gotta go back and learn math again if I want to be one of those 500k devs
I would spend more effort learning data structures/algorithms before anything else. Get a textbook for this.

Learn a popular language and practice leetcode problems:https://leetcode.com/problemset/all/?page=1
Good companies want you to do hard level problems within an hour nowadays, thats the interview

Then start worrying about studying pure math
Originally Posted By MiscMathematician⏩
lol'd

yes. always make code readable. not everyone in your group will look at that chit and understand - unproductive for teams

imagine being given this and told it's inefficient and to improve it, after chad phd left for google
Lol yep, no idea what I would do
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