I wish to meet all of the people who say "math is useless to programmers"
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And give them a day of my current job, for which I am rewieving trigonometry, Fourier transforms, Laplace transforms, studying Clarke's and Park's transforms and generaly banging my head against the whole mathematics syllabus I alread beaten into submission during my Engineering student days (which are long gone and the knowledge faded).
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
I wouldn't say "math is useless to programmers" - rather "math is of little significance to a large number of programmers, especially those doing line of business stuff and e-commerce. I have zero use for laplace transforms or matrices or trig. I have minimal use for even basic algebra 95% of the time. Math is a tool - like all tools, it has jobs it's fit for and jobs it's less fit for.
------------------------------------------------ If you say that getting the money is the most important thing You will spend your life completely wasting your time You will be doing things you don't like doing In order to go on living That is, to go on doing things you don't like doing Which is stupid. - Alan Watts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gXTZM\_uPMY
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And give them a day of my current job, for which I am rewieving trigonometry, Fourier transforms, Laplace transforms, studying Clarke's and Park's transforms and generaly banging my head against the whole mathematics syllabus I alread beaten into submission during my Engineering student days (which are long gone and the knowledge faded).
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
Surely not useless but I don't think it deserves the emphasis it has, when I needed FFTs I learnt them, I never had a need for Laplace so I don't know it, I remember some basic trigonometry and I never had a need for something remotely as "advanced" as what we did in school. School taught me to learn, what I learnt is largely irrelevant to me now. If I could go back and chose to not have some math classes, I would do it
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Years ago, in the 1980s, and in a land far, far away, New Jersey, I developed a radar display on a PC for the FAA. Those were the days of the '286 and they were s-l-o-w and floating point was an unavailable hardware option. In order to keep up and display the data in a circle, I had to re-derive the standard SIN, COS, and TAN functions to recognize 0 degrees as the positive Y-axis instead of the traditional positive X-axis. Or, to put it succinctly, how well do you understand trigonometry and integer processing?
__________________ Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now. © 2009, Rex Hammock
I also had to re-derive sin, cos and tan functions to properly apply a vectorial control in real time... multiple times for different projects :D from simple "closest value in LUT" to "linear interpolation between adjacent values".
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I ended up working for a bank, and they have some really weird calculation structures. Whenever anything more than basic maths was required I pointed them a the quants who live in that space. In 30+ years of building business solutions I never required any of the mentioned maths. What the bloody hell have they got you doing and why?
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
Motor control. If you want to have a brushless DC motor running you have to pilot 3 phases with adequate currents - and we can't use the standard 6 point drive because it is noisy.
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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Surely not useless but I don't think it deserves the emphasis it has, when I needed FFTs I learnt them, I never had a need for Laplace so I don't know it, I remember some basic trigonometry and I never had a need for something remotely as "advanced" as what we did in school. School taught me to learn, what I learnt is largely irrelevant to me now. If I could go back and chose to not have some math classes, I would do it
I need things much more advanced than what I did in school. From when I analyzed images in real time to find anomalies to when I wrote the algorithm to have a humanoid robot walk, up to now that I simply have to drive pumps and fans.
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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And give them a day of my current job, for which I am rewieving trigonometry, Fourier transforms, Laplace transforms, studying Clarke's and Park's transforms and generaly banging my head against the whole mathematics syllabus I alread beaten into submission during my Engineering student days (which are long gone and the knowledge faded).
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
Working in the engineering industry for 35 years I never trained formally in software or engineering but always had an interest in both even as a kid. 34 years ago I overheard my MD discussing not being able to get anyone to reprogram an inspection machine and I (stupidly?) volunteered to look at it. It was programmed by hand in binary codes which I had to decode by trial and error and a lot of intuition but got it going. I never looked back, since then my weekly routine regularly consists of 50% engineering, 50% software and 50% maths (See, I can do maths!) I consider myself as an engineer that can write software rather than a software engineer and, certainly for me, I couldn't do it without maths.
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And give them a day of my current job, for which I am rewieving trigonometry, Fourier transforms, Laplace transforms, studying Clarke's and Park's transforms and generaly banging my head against the whole mathematics syllabus I alread beaten into submission during my Engineering student days (which are long gone and the knowledge faded).
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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The first thing I learnt about programming, way back in 1986, was the numerical solution of an equation by the Newton-Raphson method. Later on, implemented the computation of Bessel Functions, Hankel Transforms and solution of Integral Equations, all in Fortran.
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And give them a day of my current job, for which I am rewieving trigonometry, Fourier transforms, Laplace transforms, studying Clarke's and Park's transforms and generaly banging my head against the whole mathematics syllabus I alread beaten into submission during my Engineering student days (which are long gone and the knowledge faded).
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
Now imagine how much you'd bang your head if you never had exposure to those. Knowledge is never lost, just dormant. You can rest assured if you didn't have any exposure, your life would be a lot harder now.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson ---- Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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Now imagine how much you'd bang your head if you never had exposure to those. Knowledge is never lost, just dormant. You can rest assured if you didn't have any exposure, your life would be a lot harder now.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson ---- Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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Interesting. The only math I ever used as a software developer is some pretty basic statistics. And I hated statistics as a student :D
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I need things much more advanced than what I did in school. From when I analyzed images in real time to find anomalies to when I wrote the algorithm to have a humanoid robot walk, up to now that I simply have to drive pumps and fans.
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
Yeah, sure, it's just that I don't think that since there are some programmers that make chemistry software we should all learn chemistry, same thing for maths or music for people that make DAWs. I don't have your job ;P and if I did.. I would probably be of the same idea, I didn't learn CUDA at school, now I need it and learnt it, it would be absurd to think that school would have had to teach it to me. :)
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That was also my first program, also in Fortran, but 18 years earlier - in 1968. It was the simple case of finding the square root. Luckily it worked first time, which encouraged me to continue.
Yes, that was exactly my experience, same year and given the same problem :) (different college, and possibly a different country). At the same time we were introduced to the programmable calculator an Olivetti P101 with 240 bytes of RAM and told this was the future so learn to use it. I never did any other exercise on it than solving a quadratic, it kept on breaking down. After graduating we used HP65's and finally in 1975 my bosses wanted data gathered and pre-processed at the point of data collection (underwater for offshore applications) so it was "Hello" to processors like the Intel 8008 and later the Z80. The electronics module of my physics degree came into play and I had to learn to program in assembler, fortunately I was able to get away with integer arithmetic. In my experience maths is an integral part of life, saying you don't need maths IMO is like saying you don't need to be able to write - you can get by but what a hindrance.
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Since I can't figure out superscripting, please read B^2 as B squared ... Let A = B Multiply both sides by B: AB = B^2 Add B^2 to each side: AB + B^2 = 2B^2 Subtract 2AB from each side: B^2 - AB = 2B^2 -2AB (B^2 - AB ) = 2*(B^2 - AB) 1 = 2 QED.
Division by zero will do that to you. BB-AB = 0
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And give them a day of my current job, for which I am rewieving trigonometry, Fourier transforms, Laplace transforms, studying Clarke's and Park's transforms and generaly banging my head against the whole mathematics syllabus I alread beaten into submission during my Engineering student days (which are long gone and the knowledge faded).
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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And give them a day of my current job, for which I am rewieving trigonometry, Fourier transforms, Laplace transforms, studying Clarke's and Park's transforms and generaly banging my head against the whole mathematics syllabus I alread beaten into submission during my Engineering student days (which are long gone and the knowledge faded).
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
And that's the reason I don't have a job like yours. :laugh: My programming jobs have been all in the music industry, or now, banking. I use descrete maths and the occasional easy algebra. Like golf, Calculus in all its forms are great spectator sport, but I've little interest in actually playing the game.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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At least it sounds as if you have one of the rare development jobs which is actually interesting.
Meh, it's producing firmware for motors... with only a single application (maybe two). It's mostly engineering the system as to lower reaction times, improve thermal and power efficiency, reduce noise and EM emissions... Not the most interesting job I held but its perks are elsewhere (i.e. twice the pay and a third of commute distance).
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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And give them a day of my current job, for which I am rewieving trigonometry, Fourier transforms, Laplace transforms, studying Clarke's and Park's transforms and generaly banging my head against the whole mathematics syllabus I alread beaten into submission during my Engineering student days (which are long gone and the knowledge faded).
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
I was once asked to do a chi-square analysis. I still don't know how to do that. Not part of statistics for physics So, I just computed averages, which were good enough to get the job done.
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And give them a day of my current job, for which I am rewieving trigonometry, Fourier transforms, Laplace transforms, studying Clarke's and Park's transforms and generaly banging my head against the whole mathematics syllabus I alread beaten into submission during my Engineering student days (which are long gone and the knowledge faded).
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
Any developer who does not have a good grounding in Algebra will never go very far in their career...
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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The first thing I learnt about programming, way back in 1986, was the numerical solution of an equation by the Newton-Raphson method. Later on, implemented the computation of Bessel Functions, Hankel Transforms and solution of Integral Equations, all in Fortran.