I-Programmer runs a story [0] which says it might not be math chops, but language skills that make a good programmer.
This makes sense, at least to me. I'm a fair coder, and can certainly count, but would not consider my math skills to be high level. As a teenager, C.L. Dogson's Symbolic Logic/Game of Logic [1] was a great read, but wading through formulas and proofs has always made me feel like a 4 year old.
To each his own. For my main "Human" language - English - I'm a pretty good communicator, and that also reflects in the dozen or so coding "dialects" I've kept up with over the years. In basic training I was surprised to test very high at language skills when I absolutely detested spanish in high school (the teacher had something to do with it) and even after living with a German gal for quite some time now have only the rudiments of that language.
This story resonated because I agree with it, coming around to thinking a good thirty years ago that programming is more of a language than a math skill - just not specifically one for a "human" language.
I treat coding like writing a story, itself a variation of the scientific method: 1) first draft, 2 revise, 3 go to 2 until the screen's output matches what's in my head as closely as possible.
So, at least in my case, language skills being much better than math skills result in a fair ability to program.
The folks at Stack Overflow [2] had a long thread on a similar subject some time back. Soylentils, what do you think?
[0] https://www.i-programmer.info/news/99/13517.html
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_Logic
[2] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/157354/is-mathematics-necessary-for-programming
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @05:41AM
Spoken truly like a man who has had little to no experience with developers.
Not, not all coders think they are good. In my experience most think they're quite bad. That, somewhat paradoxically, includes a number of Googlers I've worked with. But there's a reason for that. There's no simple way to quantify coding ability, yet the differences in ability are apparent among coders when trying to achieve any specific goal. The reason most Googlers think they're bad is because there are (or at least were) are a lot of *very* good developers at Googlers, and so somebody who's in e.g. the top 5% suddenly seems quite weak when they're surrounded by people in the top 1%.
Same reason people tend to constantly underestimate their wealth. We naturally tend to move up in life as our income increases. But as you move up, you are constantly put in a situation where you're (relative to your neighbors) middle class, if not poor. A guy who just became a millionaire is going to feel quite poor if he happens to be living in West Atherton.