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posted by martyb on Friday March 06 2020, @05:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the math-is-a-language-with-its-own-grammar-and-vocabulary dept.

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


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @05:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @05:55PM (#967554)

    I see your problem: s/mother/wife