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Planning to do Programming


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Hey guys, Im planning to do computer programming in collage, but starting to wonder if im capable.... People say you need to be great at maths (im allright at maths, but not capable for honours maths), Others say you need to be creative (which i am)... Can anyone give me info on this subject :huh:

Also.... is there many jobs for computer programmer's now adays?

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Its more logic skills than math skills, but you will be called upon to do conversions and things of that sort. (Simple stuff like Binary - Hex, and some simple operations with Binary and Hex, like adding subtracting and so on.)

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Yes you have to be good at logic (usually programmers have high IQ's), being good at logic generally means you will be good at maths... There are many jobs for programmers but they're mostly in india, india probably has the fastest growing software industry in the world atm...

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Hi!

Well, what kind of programming do you want to do? Web-Programming, database programming, gaming programming....

Beeing good at math is of great importance if you do programming, especially if you work with databases. (you know if you look for somethign which is like this, but not that but it also can be equal or greater then those....) a perplex databse query can be kept short with good math knowlege!

You need to be creativ e and you need to have good imagination. You need to see what your program is going to do without having the program inf ront of you. You need to be able to remember small details if you do not want to programm a few line and then check all the time how you 'named that variable' and and and...

There are jobs, and my experience is, atht many employers rather pick u based on what you can do / demonstrate then what kinf of degrees you have.

Hope i could help you!

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Yeah, maths would help, but i don't think it's like the be all end all factor for not choosing to do programming, if you enjoy it, and you're passionate about it, even if you suck at maths, you'd gradually pickup bits and pieces and probably not even realise you're actually picking up maths skills as well.

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Yeah, maths would help, but i don't think it's like the be all end all factor for not choosing to do programming, if you enjoy it, and you're passionate about it, even if you suck at maths, you'd gradually pickup bits and pieces and probably not even realise you're actually picking up maths skills as well.

like i said, math is not necessary, but if you have to filter a database for values you need math and imagination.

Imagine you have a database with items fitting cars.

you have seleted a car by year, make,model,type

tehn go ahead and go through the item-database and look for all items which fit cars with that year model... and so on.... can get complicated - especially if you did not think enough while creating the databases :-)

but i would say: try it. if you enjoy it you might actually be able to understand math more through it...

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were you ever good at writing proofs in highschool (deductive reasoning)? I find that much more important than superior math skills for me anyway. Especially when trying to find bugs because you need to be able to go through and fully understand the process of how something is working to narrow down what could be causing problems. Also when understanding someone elses code or trying to write your own algorithms.

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Edsgar Dijkstra used to say that computers are to computer science what telescopes are to astronomy... it's the most succint way I've heard it described.

You have to remember that Computer Science IS mathematics. Although this is gradually changing, in most universities, CS is usually part of the maths department because Computer Science is technically, the science of understanding computation. The curriculum of many universities is changing CS such that it becomes more about software development than simply the study of computation.

When I took my CS degree, I took many types of mathematics from multi-variable calculus to statistics, to discrete structures to linear algebra, all of which were mandatory parts of my degree. You'll study a lot of other things as well, relating more to software development than maths, but you should be prepared for a heavy dose of maths.... don't let this scare you!

The thing that most people don't understand about CS, computers and programming is that CS is the science, computers/languages are the tools and programming is the art. Anyone can learn a language, sit down and write a working programme. Most people can somewhat use a computer to do what they want. Many people can sit down and learn CS, but to combine all three is what you need to become a professional developer.

The database example that's been given tries to make a point - it's easy to make something that works... it's very hard to make something that works WELL and EFFICIENTLY. Of all the things I studied during my CS degree, the most useful things by far, in the real world have been discrete mathematics, logic, data structures, analysis of algorithms and English.

Knowing which data structures and algorithms to use to solve a given problem while balancing speed, memory/storage/network constraints and performance based on the kind of data you'll be manipulating, etc. while creating something elegant, easily understood and easily expanded upon by the next guy to look at your code is a battle you will spend the rest of your days fighting and there's a mathematical element there that simply can't be ignored.

Don't let the maths frighten you; if you want to code, and code well, it's a hoop you have to jump through.

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I am dreadful at maths and have an incredibly low IQ and haven't found either to be a problem in my programming work.

I am good however at visualizing what I want my application to do, and visualizing other aspects of it (like thinking about what classes I will need) and such. I can build quite a complex application in my head in about 20 seconds (where I have seen people spend weeks designing their applications).

After that its just writing the code, and once you realize their is nothing particularly difficult about a programming language (function, variable and control structures (loops)) then it becomes very simple.

Edited by virtorio
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