
Ask HN: Do programmers generally lack of math skills? - betimd
Almost everyday I see and meet a lot of programmers (even good ones) that lack of math skills, but they&#x27;ve good career and perform well.
How accurate is this hope you guys will answer here?
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Koshkin
You are correct, and this is unfortunate. "Any fool can write a loop," but
sometimes it takes some basic math knowledge to realize that you don't need a
loop. Or, for example, that you can iterate through a sequence of squares
simply by growing the sum of the odd numbers (which, I think, could be a
sensible interview question).

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devnonymous
I am a fairly decent programmer with a good career but I'm not all that great
at math. Not for the lack of interest, although tbh my interest in math
developed after completing my formal education.

As for other programmers I know and have worked with I believe most of the
good ones also had a good grasp of mathematics but there were also few like
me.

So from personal experience I won't draw any relationship between math skills
and programming.

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betimd
Do you think if you'd have better math skills you'd be even better programmer?

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ams6110
I've never used math beyond basic arithmetic in nearly 30 years as a
programmer. Went through three semesters of calculus, also linear algebra and
statistics in college but have never used any of it professionally. Honestly
at this point I could not do any of it without spending some substantial time
on review.

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owebmaster
What would you define as a lack of math skills? Programming is math so every
programmer use math, some well, most not so. Some use applied math in their
day by day work, most of us don't. But I bet that compared to the overall
society, programmers knowledge in math are far above average.

