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0 pointscloseparen6y ago0 comments

I’m thankful every day for getting into programming early enough to know that the adults saying “programming is like math” were full of shit. No career could be less appealing than cranking arithmetic, polynomials, integrals, and derivatives for 8 hours day in and day out, which is of course what “math” means when you’re in K12. If it were introduced to me in that context and by teachers with that mindset, I wouldn’t be here.

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chrisseaton6y ago

> which is of course what “math” means when you’re in K12

But you have it backwards. When programming is introduced as maths people see how maths is more than ‘ arithmetic, polynomials, integrals, and derivatives’.

GolDDranks6y ago

After well into getting programming, I finally started appreciating the phrase "programming is like math" - part of it was me learning more about programming and computer science, but most of it was because I realized that what we call "math" isn't all of math, and there's a wealth of interesting computational topics in math that doesn't fit the standard school curriculum thing.

Maybe it's just semantics, but I think our common perception of math is too narrow.

em-bee6y ago

well the parent doesn't make programming be like math, but extends math into programming. i didn't have that experience in my school but i can imagine that it would make math actually more interesting for some. otherwise you are right of course. programming is very different from regular K12 math.

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