99thEnemy:
I swear down!

I started with html, moved to C++, got fraustrated with OOP.

Jumped to PHP procedural for backend development, realised I needed OOP to keep up.

Had to learn it by hook or by crook to use the modern frameworks such as Yii2 and Laravel .

Went back to C++ and continued after fully understanding OOP

Win32 Api gave me headache.

Stuck with backend development with PHP and writing of complex algorithms for automation and programable logic controllers with C++

Later on I decided to checkout whats up with AI and ML ... Discovered I had to take a dive into Python because its the language that favors the above because of the availabilty of many libraries for the purpose.

Was disappointed with the syntax and how losely typed it is coming from a well structured C++ background.

To cut it short... Python as a first language will lead to fraustration if you want to move to another language, such as C++, PHP and Java.

Just as you said, for AI, ML and DS, one MUST be maths inclined.. Statistics to be precised.

I am from an engineering background so it was not a problem for me though.

And not to forget... One should know and understand logic.

so how all these learning take help your life?
What have you benefited from it?

sexylassie2:


1-I am not a dude
2- when building a site from scratch, you need three people, a designer, a frontend and a backend( designers and frontend don't need maths, any body can learn that) , note: I am not talking about modifying word press templates.
3. My main focus was about building complex system with back end functionalities, maths is very important.
4- countries with stem based curriculum have better programmers than countries without.

I know what I am saying,I am not in programming myself but I work in a security company that have built in house security softwares, all our programmers are all sourced from ukraine and poland the reason is simple because of strong focus on stem.

True True.

But could it be because vendors/Employers have little confidence in Nigerian developers.

I know that most Nigerian based developers aren't as capable as foreign counterparts but everyone needs to be be given a chance to seize.

What we see is that even for basic BI projects & Enterprise Data projects, a lot of Customers(company) totally bypass Nigerians and seek foreigns. Usually the ones that call for a Nigerian developer does so because he can't afford a foreigner.

DissTroy:


LOL. Gatekeepers. Especially the 'influencer' ones on Twitter (some teenagers) creating long threads daily on how-tos about CSS, JavaScript and Python but when you ask for the projects they've created with these, they chicken out.

Proof of your programming (especially web development skills) is your portfolio. Anything else might just be something you searched on Google or copied from StackOverflow.


All hail Stack Overflow.

The ones that annoy me the most are those who like creating threads like

100 websites for learning js
200 git repositories you must look at to learn web dev
How to become a front-end dev

Etc. Most of those twitter influencer programmers are empty barrels. Most real programmer will not have that kind of time.

My opinion on the issue of needing maths for programming,,, @sexylassie2

Well it depends. Programming as a whole is very broad and different people know "maths knowledge" as different things and in different ways.

Broadly speaking, maths is needed in almost every walks of life including Medicine and health care.

In the case of programming, different levels and even aspects of maths understanding us required for front-end, back-end, block chain, data analysis, data science, machine learning, game dev etc.

Not only that, a programmer will also be required to have basic, advanced or expert knowledge of one or more field of maths to be good in any of these aspects of programming eg geometry in game dev, statistics and regression in data science or just basic algebra in front-end or back end development.

So the saying that maths is compulsory to become a successful programmer is true but can be misleading or misunderstood since someone who knows basic algebra but is bad at geometry and calculus can be considered to be terrible in maths although he has sufficient math knowledge to excel in web dev and data analysis or even some aspects of software automation.

So while maths is required, the kind of maths that scares people from taking some courses in the uni is not compulsory for many specialties in programming.

Contango:


Unpopular truth

A lot of people will disagree with you but what you said is just the cold truth. People refuting you are people who don’t delve deep into aspects of programming that requires efficient use of algorithms and data structures hence conclude from their limited perspective that one does not really need maths and logic. Sadly they think that what they are doing is deep even though it is barely at the surface. You will also find out that they write codes that are rife in bugs and are among those saying it is impossible to write bug-free codes. A lot of them don’t even understand the principles behind a lot of codes they copy hook, line, and sinker from stack overflow for as long as it temporary solves their problem. Unfortunately, the ill-understood codes they copied creates some other conflict along the line and then the circle continues. One popular example is that people with poor mathematical and logical finesse will not account for conditions where a “divided by zero” occurs or situations where Boolean logic self destruct under certain conditions. Honestly I don’t understand how people code without understanding basic linear algebra...particularly matrix operations.

If you investigate those claiming you don’t need good maths and logic background properly, you will discover that most of them don’t go beyond linear data types and I could bet that most of them have not coded a 3 level nested loop before.

It is impossible to do real coding with mediocre understanding of maths and logic. All I can say is that give a person who is poor in maths and logic a program to design and get ready for breakdown of program at regular intervals because new unaccounted scenarios will keep arising.

Nested loops are the death of time efficiency. ON2 time is an abomination to big data One pass through is king. But the mental gymnastics needed to achieve it is madness

Finally, there are levels in programming and a software engineer needs maths

I learnt python,htmland (c++ basics) 4rm freecodecamp,learnt javascript 4rm grasshoper,nd wrkd on an onion site, no math

Grandlord:


Nested loops are the death of time efficiency. ON2 time is an abomination to big data

One pass through is king. But the mental gymnastics to achieve it is madness

3 or more nested loops are not so bad as we think. They only become issues when the data becomes very large, I mean hundreds of thousands to billions. But for say, a thousand data or less, 3 or more nested loops tends to do okay.

I don't get the fuss behind Math and Programming. All you need to succeed in the so called core programming is to be average at math. An average math student would solve a lot of algorithm and data structure problems.

I can open up my favorite backend framework for you and you won't see Math littered over the place. The most important is logic, you only need to be solid with Math if you are doing AI/ML.

Grandlord:


Nested loops are the death of time efficiency. ON2 time is an abomination to big data One pass through is king. But the mental gymnastics to achieve it is madness

Finally, there are levels in programming and a software engineer needs maths

Of course nested loops are highly inefficient. The point here is that a programmer with no maths and logic background will not even know why they are inefficient to start with. Someone without maths background will not even know how to analyze algorithms

AntiAPC2023:
so how all these learning take help your life?
What have you benefited from it?

earned reasonably from a decent amount of projects
More of algorithms and automation for electronics.



Advance Web Development has no proper market in Nigeria for individuals so I don't give a shit about it .

Karleb:


3 or more nested loops are not so bad as we think. They only become issues when the data becomes very large, I mean hundreds of thousands to billions. But for say, a thousand data or less, 3 or more nested loops tends to do okay.

I don't get the fuss behind Math and Programming. All you need to succeed in the so called core programming is to be average at math. An average math student would solve a lot of algorithm and data structure problems.

A 3 layer nested loop will have performance issues when your code is to do many iterations. You will need maths to understand why and how to avoid it

labi1977:


Why do some women say silly things n they don't know what they are talking about just arguing to seem smart

Here arguing with actual programmers when she probably can't write a line of code

Well I hope she has learnt something today

Hahahaha actually it's not a woman thing sha it's actually an individual thing irrespective of sex. Asked that Software development can be learnt without the knowledge of maths or it can be learnt which just the little basics. When she talked about the focus on Polish and Ukraine programmers I laugh die!!! She no know say Companies dey cry say Foreign companies don almost Poach All the senior developers for Nigeria finish ....

Contango:


A 3 layer nested loop will have performance issues when your code is to do many iterations. You will need maths to understand why and how to avoid it

How do I need Math to understand this?

Linear, Exponential, Quadratic time Algorithm aren't as bad as text books make them sound.

What if all I need to process is just 100 data? It's not everytime that we process large data.

International certification by the likes of Microsoft and Cisco are very important if you wanna secure any IT job

ReactJs:

the world is moving past the whole certification oriented way of employment.

I sincerely don't get the fuss about this DS & A thingy.

An average individual would be good with DS & A in 6 months. The only part hard about it is the Graph Data Structure and Algorithms themselves.

I personally think they are overrated. No one has ever asked me to invert a binary tree or perform a Bread First Search.

Karleb:


3 or more nested loops are not so bad as we think. They only become issues when the data becomes very large, I mean hundreds of thousands to billions. But for say, a thousand data or less, 3 or more nested loops tends to do okay.

I don't get the fuss behind Math and Programming. All you need to succeed in the so called core programming is to be average at math. An average math student would solve a lot of algorithm and data structure problems.

I can open up my favorite backend framework for you and you won't see Math littered over the place. The most important is logic, you only need to be solid with Math if you are doing AI/ML.

Emphasis on BIG DATA

A software engineer can't be 'average in maths' . He must be very proficient in discrete mathematics, Boolean algebra, etc.

The confusion here is that people fail to understand that there are levels in software development. There are programmers that depend on reusable tools built by other engineers, to do their work. Such tools are abstractions of the tedious mathematical and logical work. But the work had already been done by other engineers more versed in computational maths and logic.

For instance, you can easily use a sort() function to sort your array and move on. But the sort function itself has probably hundreds of lines of mathematical proofs of time efficiency, logic and algorithms underneath it and was written by more versed engineers to make life easier for other programmers.

A programmer who uses tools built by core software engineers should not be oblivious of the work those engineers did and the knowledge there acquired to be able to build those tools. It just shows ignorance and shallowness and it is out of this ignorance they think maths is not needed in programming.

Contango:


Of course nested loops are highly inefficient. The point here is that a programmer with no maths and logic background will not even know why they are inefficient to start with. Someone without maths background will not even know how to analyze algorithms

I agree. Algorithmic analysis and proofs of time and space efficiency requires proficient knowledge of discrete mathematics, Boolean algebra, combinatorics, set theory etc. That is core programming.

Some developers who use tools built by top engineers are ignorant of the work needed to build such tools from scratch and to make it efficient. Because all they do is put these tools together with a little logic to make apps, they think mathematics is not necessary. That's shallow.

Grandlord:


Emphasis on BIG DATA

A software engineer can't be 'average in maths' . He must be very proficient in discrete mathematics, Boolean algebra, etc.

The confusion here is that people fail to understand there are levels in software development. There are programmers that depend on reusable tools built by other engineers, to do their work. Such tools are abstractions of the tedious mathematical and logical work. But the work had already been done by other engineers more versed in computational maths and logic.

For instance, you can easily use a sort() function to sort your array and move on. But the sort function itself have probably hundreds of lines of mathematical proofs of time efficiency, logic and algorithms underneath it and was written by more versed engineers to make life easier for other programmers.

A programmer who uses tools built by core software engineers should not be oblivious of the work those engineers did and the knowledge there acquired to be able to build those tools. It just shows ignorance and shallowness and it is out of this ignorance they think maths is not needed in programming.

You have a point. But even big companies don't handle big data all the time and algorithms that process data in linear time and above are not useless.

Of course, programmers who took time to write out utility functions and core features of any language / framework deserve to be praised.

But I don't like how computer scientists Gate keep with the ENGINEER keyword. There are programmers who don't code, not that they can't but some handles documentation and technical writings, some are into UI/UX. These people are Software Engineers too.

The fact that you don't know a lot of math or use a lot of math shouldn't make you less of an ENGINEER.

sexylassie2:


Mathematics and logic is needed for all web development.

Logic yes, mathematics......meh...

Karleb:


3 or more nested loops are not so bad as we think. They only become issues when the data becomes very large, I mean hundreds of thousands to billions. But for say, a thousand data or less, 3 or more nested loops tends to do okay.

I don't get the fuss behind Math and Programming. All you need to succeed in the so called core programming is to be average at math. An average math student would solve a lot of algorithm and data structure problems.

I can open up my favorite backend framework for you and you won't see Math littered over the place. The most important is logic, you only need to be solid with Math if you are doing AI/ML.

You just reminded me of when I first started compiler construction, see the kind amount of loops I use ehn.

sexylassie2:


Mathematics and logic is needed for all web development.

Not all sis, logic is more important.

tensazangetsu20:

Front end also gets a bit rough depending on what you are trying to build. It's not as rosy as people think. But why source from Ukraine when we have good programmers in Nigeria.

Well old Soviet countries, ESPECIALLY mother Russia, have some of the very best, if not the very best, mathematics programs and talents on this planet. And a strong background in mathematics is extremely important when it comes to security (cyphers and all that). Eastern Europe is equally home to some of the world's best programmers and hackers. Most of the successful attacks in Western digital infrastructure emanates from the East.

Grandlord:


Emphasis on BIG DATA

A software engineer can't be 'average in maths' . He must be very proficient in discrete mathematics, Boolean algebra, etc.

The confusion here is that people fail to understand that there are levels in software development. There are programmers that depend on reusable tools built by other engineers, to do their work. Such tools are abstractions of the tedious mathematical and logical work. But the work had already been done by other engineers more versed in computational maths and logic.

For instance, you can easily use a sort() function to sort your array and move on. But the sort function itself has probably hundreds of lines of mathematical proofs of time efficiency, logic and algorithms underneath it and was written by more versed engineers to make life easier for other programmers.

A programmer who uses tools built by core software engineers should not be oblivious of the work those engineers did and the knowledge there acquired to be able to build those tools. It just shows ignorance and shallowness and it is out of this ignorance they think maths is not needed in programming.

I'm tired of talking about the last, they Jeep on mocking you about how it won't put food on your table, which is honestly true. I just remembered the free Stanford course I took on networks, that stuff really taught me a lot on what goes on, but as usual ndi Java and html will mock your knowledge.

Contango:


A 3 layer nested loop will have performance issues when your code is to do many iterations. You will need maths to understand why and how to avoid it

Unfortunately, sometimes it is inescapable.

ocelot2006:


Well old Soviet countries, ESPECIALLY mother Russia, have some of the very best, if not the very best, mathematics programs and talents on this planet. And a strong background in mathematics is extremely important when it comes to security (cyphers and all that). Eastern Europe is equally home to some of the world's best programmers and hackers. Most of the successful attacks in Western digital infrastructure emanates from the East.

True sha. They always come first in international maths Olympiada and informatics Olympiads likewise the Asians and Americans. I still feel the bad educational background keeps Africans at a disadvantage.

Karleb:


You have a point. But even big companies don't handle big data all the time and algorithms that process data in linear time and above are not useless.

Of course, programmers who took time to write out utility functions and core features of any language / framework deserve to be praised.

But I don't like how computer scientists Gate keep with the ENGINEER keyword. There are programmers who don't code, not that they can't but some handles documentation and technical writings, some are into UI/UX. These people are Software Engineers too.

The fact that you don't know a lot of math or use a lot of math shouldn't make you less of an ENGINEER.

Well...a big company that deals with data should be wary of how it's systems would handle that data if it grows big over time. It is called scaling. 10000 users and a million users aren't the same. How will your system behave when you have a billion users? How fast is your search algorithm? These are the questions engineers ask and answers to these questions lie in core theories and abstract concepts. The very fundamentals of computer science.


You wouldn't call a wordpress guy who put themes together a software engineer would you? Let's not water down the title of 'software engineer'. There's a reason for that title. Rather let's work hard and stay curious enough to attain that level.

Grandlord:


Emphasis on BIG DATA

A software engineer can't be 'average in maths' . He must be very proficient in discrete mathematics, Boolean algebra, etc.

The confusion here is that people fail to understand that there are levels in software development. There are programmers that depend on reusable tools built by other engineers, to do their work. Such tools are abstractions of the tedious mathematical and logical work. But the work had already been done by other engineers more versed in computational maths and logic.

For instance, you can easily use a sort() function to sort your array and move on. But the sort function itself has probably hundreds of lines of mathematical proofs of time efficiency, logic and algorithms underneath it and was written by more versed engineers to make life easier for other programmers.

A programmer who uses tools built by core software engineers should not be oblivious of the work those engineers did and the knowledge there acquired to be able to build those tools. It just shows ignorance and shallowness and it is out of this ignorance they think maths is not needed in programming.

I am average in maths, no shame in making this pronouncement, It has affected me in some areas but not so much. No one would really say math is not needed to be honest.

Those sorting algorithms are actually easy to understand & I didn't need to be a math guru to understand sorting algorithms. Those examples are every where online for Quicksort, Merge sort etc for anyone who wants to learn.

If you want to see the algorithm behind sorting, you can easily double click on the core function itself using any IntelliJ IDE or other IDEs, It should show you the function behind it. It is not as complicated as you make it seem.

SegFault:

I'm tired of talking about the last, they Jeep on mocking you about how it won't put food on your table, which is honestly true. I just remembered the free Stanford course I took on networks, that stuff really taught me a lot on what goes on, but as usual ndi Java and html will mock your knowledge.

For a self-taught developer who wants to get a job quickly it will take a long time learning core concepts of computer science and so it is not necessary considering the situation. So they can go on and learn the frameworks and apply for jobs.

But to stay relevant and indispensable and to completely understand what you're working with, you need to stay curious and continue learning instead of saying algorithms and maths are not necessary...which is ignorant.

As a matter of fact, with the advent of no-code and less-code platforms and tools, a developer who doesn't go deeper in learning will find himself irrelevant and redundant because the shallow things he knows how to do will be taken over by drag-and -drop... which is already happening today with Wix etc.

SegFault:

Unfortunately, sometimes it is inescapable.

True actually

Karleb:


How do I need Math to understand this?

Linear, Exponential, Quadratic time Algorithm aren't as bad as text books make them sound.

What if all I need to process is just 100 data? It's not everytime that we process large data.

To save time, just YouTube the O-notations in analysis of algorithms

tosinhtml:


I am average in maths, no shame in making this pronouncement, It has affected me in some areas but not so much. No one would really say math is not needed to be honest.

Those sorting algorithms are actually easy to understand & I didn't need to be a math guru to understand sorting algorithms. Those examples are every where online for Quicksort, Merge sort etc for anyone who wants to learn.

If you want to see the algorithm behind sorting, you can easily double click on the core function itself using any IntelliJ IDE or other IDEs, It should show you the function behind it. It is not as complicated as you make it seem.

You can see the code for the sorting algorithms alright but do you understand how that code came about? the very reasoning behind it, and why it was written that way?...do you understand the time and space complexity analysis needed to arrive at that code in terms of CPU operations?

You can sort an array in many different ways... quick sort, mergesort, insertion sort, bubblesort etc but why do we choose quicksort and mergesort? do you understand which is fastest in terms of Big O analysis?
Can you prove it mathematically? Do you understand why almost all programming languages use the quicksort algorithm for their sorting function?

How long would it take to sort 1billion data in a dataset with insertion sort? Will we wait forever? Can we do it with a better algo like quicksort? Can we even invent a better algo than quicksort?

There was a time insertion sort was the big thing...but as data grew, we needed to make computers search and sort things faster, so people invented the code for quicksort and the rest we use today. The tool they used? Mathematics.

I'm not trying to make things look complicated. It is what it is. Being the curious person that I am, I dig deeper into anything I'm interested in learning and that makes me understand and appreciate the very fundamentals of it. It is also through this understanding that new and better inventions can be made.

Bro, you are just a hater trying to glorify yourself and your self taught skills. There is a clear line between a CS graduate and a self taught programmer. If you even know what computer science encompasses, you will not make this comparison. I am CS graduate and a self taught programmer alike.

No offense, the same ignorance that drives this post is still why your so called "Self thought programmer" don't go far. If you have worked in a fortune 1000 company you must have come across the phrase "Coding Monkey". This is a term used for people who just learn coding without learning things like algorithms and the entire process of a software development lifecycle. All you know is, Create, Read, Update and Delete.
How many of your so called Self taught programmers can boldly explain how an element is searched in an array? You just know there is a function that comes with the programming language that does that. How fast or efficient it is doesn't concern you. All you know is that it works. Given a task, you can always go to stack overflow and copy a solution without analyzing resource consumption and time complexity.
Go to Google and tell them you are a self taught. Even an average CS graduate don't make it up there because there is a lot.

I can talk on this all day, but let me stop here. And by the way, they don't teach you how to code in CS, they teach you algorithms and you can learn any programming language to implement your algorithm.

The only insecure person I see here... Well.
You guys are trying though, no doubt. But c'mon, y'all should let it rest, there is a clear line. Don't compare someone who just went to get a certificate with someone who actually studied computer science.

Cheers!