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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
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday March 06 2020, @08:05PM
The more languages you learn, the easier it gets to pick up and retain new ones. But sometimes a language just doesn't stick, while another one does. Maybe the ones that do we spoke in a past life so it feels more like "remembering it" than "learning it." Or maybe the thought shapes evoked by the sticky ones form the crucial mnemonic connections in your brain that the slippery ones don't.
I suspect it's the sub-structure of a language (or any body of knowledge, really) under-girding its formal expression that constitute the key to whether you "get it" or not. Perhaps we can manipulate that, or apply other filters to the formal expression of the oeuvre, that can serve as a better "key." (Note: it's different than saying a person is a "visual learner" vs. "tactile learner" or what-have-you).
Washington DC delenda est.