"The majority of code for something like Facebook or Twitter probably involves very little math."
So it is clear from word choice that the author is just guessing. But Facebook does image recognition, it does ad placement, it does graph networks, it has EdgeRank - Facebook is only possible via math. Sure, perhaps there is more code written to push bits around on the front end and such, but it lives and dies by math. But even screen layout requires math - dealing with resizing screens, different ad and post sizes and so on - there's a lot of admittedly basic algebra there.
With that said, I agree with much of the content of the post. I run into far too many engineers with no real skill at writing or communication, and that is also a large hindrance in the field. Naturally, every job will require a different balance of skills, and no absolute statement is possible.
However, I would say now more than ever math is required to really excel. Write the front end to some CRUD app? Sure, you can do that (where "you" is somebody with no experience). Write a side scroller? Maybe, just maybe you can pull that off. But that awesome new job writing a game that involves game physics. No, you can't do that. Hey, we need some image processing on this app. No, you can't do that. Let's track some objects. No, you can't do that. How about schedule some jobs in the factory? No, you can't do that. Hey, we have this product idea where we will use an arduino to... no, you wouldn't understand PID controls, you can't do that. Sigh. Want to write your 1023rd CRUD app? Slap some javascript together? Sure, you can do that.
This is why when the topic of university (should I go) comes up I am always a proponent. I was taught to write, I was taught to balance books and run a business, I learned calculus, linear algebra, AI, numerical methods, EE, mechanical engineering, thermodynamics, physics, statistics, chemistry. I've used all of that in my career (this week at work I am implementing some Kalman filters, for example), and my only regret is that I didn't take more math courses. The valley is on fire now with jobs requiring math - machine learning, hardware interfaces, augmented reality, and so on.
If I had a friend with no real math and an interest in programming I would not dissuade them, but math is very important in an important subset of programming.
Finally, I have to say I've watched a lot of people struggle to put a program together which has nested if statements or multiple and/or conditions. Generally speaking, the people that struggle to do it don't have any math skills. So even if you are programming something that doesn't require math knowledge, it certainly requires math aptitude.
I agree that writing skills are important, but I also think that strong mathematicians are skilled writers as well. One general drive in mathematics is to lay out complicated ideas in ways that make the resulting theorems and questions seem completely natural and even trivial. It's no small task, and in my experience it has drastically improved my technical writing skills (where before math I only had historical/literary/debate writing skills).
> One general drive in mathematics is to lay out complicated ideas in ways that make the resulting theorems and questions seem completely natural and even trivial.
.... to other mathematicians. And this is often a problem. I've had to fire mathematicians-come-developers who thought that writing their specs like a maths paper was a viable way of communicating their ideas, because they proved totally unable to communicate their ideas in a way that the rest of the team understood.
Lets be clear: I'm not saying all mathematicians do this - one of the brightest and best developers I've ever worked with was also deeply into maths yet is also great at communicating.
I just don't for a second believe that being a mathematician in any way implies that you'll necessarily be skilled at writing for a non-mathematician audience.
Mathematical writing is a particular genre of writing that doesn't work that well for technical and design documentation. This is not to say that these things can't contain mathematics, but you can't follow the usual template of:
* Abstract & Introduction
* Lemmas, Theorems, and Corollaries, each with their own proofs
* Some examples sprinkled throughout
* Maybe a concluding section with further questions or areas of investigation
Not to mention all of the machine learning behind the recommendation systems that try to figure out the best ad to show to a given person at any given time...
So it is clear from word choice that the author is just guessing. But Facebook does image recognition, it does ad placement, it does graph networks, it has EdgeRank - Facebook is only possible via math. Sure, perhaps there is more code written to push bits around on the front end and such, but it lives and dies by math. But even screen layout requires math - dealing with resizing screens, different ad and post sizes and so on - there's a lot of admittedly basic algebra there.
With that said, I agree with much of the content of the post. I run into far too many engineers with no real skill at writing or communication, and that is also a large hindrance in the field. Naturally, every job will require a different balance of skills, and no absolute statement is possible.
However, I would say now more than ever math is required to really excel. Write the front end to some CRUD app? Sure, you can do that (where "you" is somebody with no experience). Write a side scroller? Maybe, just maybe you can pull that off. But that awesome new job writing a game that involves game physics. No, you can't do that. Hey, we need some image processing on this app. No, you can't do that. Let's track some objects. No, you can't do that. How about schedule some jobs in the factory? No, you can't do that. Hey, we have this product idea where we will use an arduino to... no, you wouldn't understand PID controls, you can't do that. Sigh. Want to write your 1023rd CRUD app? Slap some javascript together? Sure, you can do that.
This is why when the topic of university (should I go) comes up I am always a proponent. I was taught to write, I was taught to balance books and run a business, I learned calculus, linear algebra, AI, numerical methods, EE, mechanical engineering, thermodynamics, physics, statistics, chemistry. I've used all of that in my career (this week at work I am implementing some Kalman filters, for example), and my only regret is that I didn't take more math courses. The valley is on fire now with jobs requiring math - machine learning, hardware interfaces, augmented reality, and so on.
If I had a friend with no real math and an interest in programming I would not dissuade them, but math is very important in an important subset of programming.
Finally, I have to say I've watched a lot of people struggle to put a program together which has nested if statements or multiple and/or conditions. Generally speaking, the people that struggle to do it don't have any math skills. So even if you are programming something that doesn't require math knowledge, it certainly requires math aptitude.