In my opinion, math is nothing more than the study of logic. And, as everyone seems to agree, programming requires logic ... I think that there is a big misunderstanding of what mathematics really are. People focus on math being complex equation and strange symbols: this is not math, this is the language we chose to explore (cartesian) logic. Would you reduce medicine to its wording, or coding to C++? I am very surprised to read that many programmers think that they do not need math to do their job. Look at any code: "function", "class" (=equivalence class), "variable", "array" (=vector), "+", "*", "%", ... understanding how these objects interact is the aim of mathematics! Even at a more fundamental level, a code essentially consists of 2 things: Logical tests (!) and loops (=matrix multiplication). Math is everywhere in a code, even if you don't see it! There is no doubt for me that math helps programmers. I would even say that there is no programer without mathematical knowledge (understanding what are functions or classes is a mathematical knowledge in itself, even if you did not learn it in your math class! ). Coders use maths at every line of their code without thinking about it. The language used to express things is slightly different, but the core is the same. Finally, when considering very complex computations, one quickly realizes that the mathematical language allows faster and better analysis of the problem than any programing language: It was developed in this scope!