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Orek
7y

Do you think one may become a good programmer or coder without excellent knowledge of mathematics or algorithms?

Comments
  • 2
    Yes, but you have to work harder at it. You need to develop good skills in software design, and translating that design into code.
  • 0
    @xinuxunil thx , i had the same question, because I am studying in a technical school computer.
  • 0
    I firmly believe that you should have a proper understanding on how a computer works. How else can you optimize code?
  • 1
    @Orek: no. If you don't have a knowledge of these things beforehand, you will need to work at them as you go along in order to be a good programmer. You don't need *a priori* skill in math/algorithms, and you shouldn't view math ability as 'either you have it or you don't'

    Also, you can clearly become a competent programmer without these, but (and I know 'good' is somewhat subjective) I think to be *good* you'll need to bring yourself to study/work at this.
  • 2
    Oh yes for sure you will! I sucked at math but guess what? In all the 17+ years of working in the field I have never ever needed to be good in math. So if you stay away from developing stuff like 3D engines you are good to go, even for challenging business applications. However, you do need a solid foundation and you can obtain that by thorough education. Math does come in play with more advanced topics, like AI, state machines, parsers and such but even then you can learn discrete mathematics which is not that hard. I mastered it quite well and a free course on coursera.org called 'Learning how to learn' helped me very good at getting my discrete mathematics into my brain.
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