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Math and computation algorithms: why are they needed in programming? (lemy.lol)

submitted 3 months ago by matcha_addict@lemy.lol to c/programming@programming.dev

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Sorry, the question in title sounds naive. I have no doubt that math is essential in programming, but I am thinking about philosophy of programming and want to summarize when they're needed in programming. My attempt is below:

Most applications of programming are making electronics do things through their interfaces. Whether that's telling a screen to display something, a network wire to transport data, a hard disk to persist data.

But we often need math because we often transform data, or we might make said electronics do things based on user input, or an event. Transforming an event to data is a mathematical construction.

Some applications are almost purely mathematical, like banking, crypto currency, or encryption.

In your opinion, does this fully explain why we need math in programming? Is there a better way to sum it up?

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[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 23 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Formal math can be pretty dang handy, for programmin

But I've never actually needed it, for programming.

Boolean math does sometime look like a super power. I've noticed that veteran programmers pretty much all use it (or an intuition that is essentially the same thing), even if they've never been formally taught.

"I think we can do this in one fewer levels of nesting."

"No way."

.... some time and analysis later...

"How the hell did you know that?!"

"I noticed the logic simplifies a bit with DeMorgan's theorum and still works out."

"What the fuck did you just say?!"

...

"I said it was a lucky guess."