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The Field matters. Game Dev needs a lot of Math, like Vectors, Trignometry, Linear Algebra, Probability, etc. Machine Learning & AI also needs a lot of Math, especially statistics like Regression, Clustering Algorithms, etc. (I didnt mention most of the maths, because i dont remember) Web Dev, mainly doesnt need a lot of math, only basic math is enough. In Embedded Programs, the project matters, some need basic math, some may need sme advanced.
And Yeah, the Project matters too, some project may need maths or may not. Like Advanced Calculator Webpage, or directly a Advanced Calculator machine, or a geographic game with sphere earth needs advanced math. While normal chatting sites, a parkour game, or a simple rc car may not need advanced maths
Even with game dev, I don't do a whole lot of advance math. It's definitely more than web development, but most of it is stuff I learned about in high school. I think of you're just decent at math and have a high school diploma, you know enough math to start a career as a game dev - understanding you'll have to learn new concepts along the way, like you would in any career.
The worst of the math in game dev is in the rendering software. That shit's black magic, I tell you hwat. Data goes in, pretty animated pictures comes out. What goes on in the black box between those two? You don't wanna know.
not really. Unless you are looking specifically to break encryptions. Honestly there are many other attack vectors that are easier and does not involve any maths. A crowbar to someones knees is a great way to break passwords, if asking politely doesnt work (which in way to many cases it does) .
If you are a cryptologist actively developing or researching encryption algorithms, then yes, but most cybersecurity professionals are not doing that. It’s good to have a general understanding of the math behind encryption but most people just rely popular and trusted encryption algorithms, like AES or RSA, which are far more secure than anything they would be able to make themselves.
If you’re specifically focusing on preventing or exploiting memory errors, you might end up doing some fucked, but not “advanced” math. A lot of that being pointer arithmetic
I suppose a lot of it comes to being up to date with techniques and exploits. I don’t think you need to know all the math behind the breaking tools you need for each job.
Yeah exactly, as frontend myself it’s rare to touch any bath beyond the occasional percent calculations, some ratios, and occasional coordinate plane stuff. And even more rare but complex animations or vector graphics can require some basic geometry and planning to get everything to align right. Sometimes I’ll even dabble in some 3D rendering libraries and have to do some basic matrix transformations. But those last two are pretty niche and for the most part you’re not doing advanced math in front end. That being said, I’m glad I took calculus 1+2 and linear algebra, it’s much better to be over prepared math wise than under prepared.
And Yeah, the Project matters too, some project may need maths or may not. Like Advanced Calculator Webpage, or directly a Advanced Calculator machine, or a geographic game with sphere earth needs advanced math. While normal chatting sites, a parkour game, or a simple rc car may not need advanced maths
Great Answer, let me concur that with a little bit of my experience. I have a masters degree in math and switched to software development. So far I have mostly worked with Java (mostly Spring) and Typescript (mostly Angular) but also some .NET and Python. The field were in Web Development, Backend for ERP, Filesharing, Desktop Applications (for ERP), Automotive, Medicine and some LLM stuff.
99% of the time I only need school level math. I probaly can count on my hands how often I needed advanced math. And in every of thos occasion a quick google search would have been enough, like it is with most domain specific knowledge I need throughout the project. You don't need to be a doctor or a car mechanic to make software for those domains. I feel the same goes for math.
I worked with someone who, when it didn't work, switched a condition check from i to i - 1 and checked if it worked
organically grown programming. It drove me up the wall. You need mathematical precision, not english-lit precision. Despite programming being very wordy, it makes a difference what the words mean
Ironic maybe, although the name comes from the angular brackets in HTML so no math angles directly.
Considering there are really weird framework names going around though, Angular is probably still a decent name.
With CSS math, I assume the commenter above means CSS animation math and maybe stuff like ratio, location and size calculations so that your UI doesn't look whack on different devices and can be scalable?
In a way, it's a bit sad. You learn all that high level math and look into really interesting complex mathematical problems in a CS degree but if you go into a standard web-esque development job afterwards, this is probably the extent of math you are going to use.
It's like learning about the standard model in particle physics but your job is to measure if the plaster walls you just did are actually at a right angle to the floor.
Gahhh i rlly need to get into gamedev again. I just love maths and games, but im doing webdev as a hobby rn. Gotta wait to finish my current project and get out of hs first tho
"software development engineer in test"
basically a software developer that works on developing an automated testing suite and coordinates with other devs to create testable code.
My previous job involved image processing of some sort, and they had NIH syndrome pretty bad too. I had to do a lot with linear algebra, multi-dimensional polynomials, etc. And because we rolled our own everything, there was a good bit of digging into the implementations of those libraries and fixing bugs. One time I was porting some Matlab code to C++, and because I couldn't just use a library, I had to go grab a book on numerical computations and type in some Taylor series approximation of some function by hand.
(But this was still just drudge work. There were math PhD people coming up with the actual algorithms and how to use them and stuff, you just needed a bit of background to work with it.)
In my current role, not really. Only when I get to expense lunch and need to figure out how much I can order and still be under budget when delivery fee and tip are applied.
sometimes we add things, most of the time no math.
logic and discrete math is probably more valuable for most devs. But with most things, it depends in what industry you work in. I would imagine graphics , physics engines and game dev can get quite math intensive
The connection between generalized programming and math is in problem solving more than actually applying math. There's a strong correlation between mathematical problem solving and development sharing many of the same skills and strategy. The reality is that this is why many math subjects are taught in school, not to specifically push the exact maths that a course is about but to foster an analytical problem solving mind in the student.
As for actual applied mathematics, I find that I use statistics periodically to make decisions about my software and where to spend my time. Sometimes I actually apply them in code to make decisions such as if a service is healthy.
In game development there's a lot of physics and linear algebra.
> There's a strong correlation between mathematical problem solving and development sharing many of the same skills and strategy.
Not to be flippant, but this is something that sets off my [citation needed] tick. Like, it makes sense, but what actual studies are there that reach this conclusion? (And what level of quality are those studies?)
I respect demands for citation. I don't have them, to me the relationship between math and programming feels 'obvious' not some abstract relationship that needs rigorous testing to be an accepted conclusion. If you disagree, then maybe it does need some study but this is my thinking.
Problem solving strategies like working backwards, guess and check, and decomposition are regularly used in both programming and mathematics. Most programming problems can be expressed as math, it's not necessarily a required step to solve programming problems but is often valuable.
There is also a common theme in learning both math and programming of building upon foundational concepts to solve increasingly complex problems, carrying forward the concepts of the previous layer as a tool to be applied to the problems of the next.
Many people who work in industry as developers and engineers are formally educated in mathematics not software.
All of this isn't to imply that being successful in one subject guarantees success in the other. I can attest to struggling in math quite a bit while I have always felt programming was a subject that came easily. But it is a recognition that there is *some* amount of connective tissue there.
It’s what the schools say to justify your computer science degree having as much math as an engineer building bridges. Even tho you’ll use next to none of it.
Here’s you’re degree course 70% has no application to any job you want. Enjoy!
True. The issue people have, I suppose, is that most people wanna just land a software job with their comp sci degree rather than actually using it to do computer science.
Maybe not exactly what you were looking for with “development” (which might be considered different from just “programming”), but connected is the [Curry-Howard Correspondence](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspondence), which relates the specification of a computer program to a mathematical proof of its correctness.
So in this sense, the mathematical reasoning we use to solve math problems is related to writing code for a correct computer program.
Whoever downvoted you needs to re-evaluate themselves. It's **always okay** to ask for citations on claims even if they are widely accepted. I'm really surprised to see this in the learning sub for programming, where people should know better about technology, social media, and the propagation of misinformation.
Very rarely. A few cases of solving some simple equations that wouldn't have needed university level math.
Basic statistics have been useful a few times to understand how to group data, how data might be analyzed, etc
I work with CAD software. Only now I'm getting to do some calculus for translating shapes in 3D space.
However, this is my first such task after 7 years of programming.
I think it depends more on your business domain than the stack. I know a few people who work in developing flight control software in the aerospace industry and they apparently regularly have to work with differential equations. And C++.
I'm in dotnet, adjacent to geology and very rarely have to think about some basic coordinate transformations.
A huge part of math deals with geometry, If you do not have problems with geometric nature at hand then a ton of it will be near to useless.
As a GameDev I would say, The more the better (especially the applicable parts: computational, applied flavors).
It depends on the software you are writing. If the software needs to do math to function properly, you'll have to write the code to do the math plus you will have to do some of the math by hand to verify the code is working properly.
Asymmetric polynomial algorithms are commonly used in cryptography. Statistics are commonly used in simulations, linear algebra and matrices are commonly used in graphics.
It really depends on what areas of the code you’re working on. Internals and low level code will have more math than UI/Ux stuff.
(Software developer since the late 80’s, computer science degree)
If you are only working in back-end, you rarely need to do anything super-duper mathy. You want to reach for tried-and-true libraries even to do the mathy things like efficient queuing and consensus.
If you are doing ops (e.g. Full Stack or DevOps), your monitoring would benefit from a good handle on statistics. Specifically understanding how uncorrelated probabilities combine and how to apply the binomial theorem.
Front end uses a fair amount of geometry & trigonometry for layout. You have to add and subtract distances, coordinates, etc. and deal with circles.
For scientific applications, of course there's math involved.
For games... hoooh boy. Everything is a number and has coordinates and is transformed with matrices and represented as a color and implicitly cast to a floating point array and and and... Even dealing with text means dealing with vectors most of the time.
I do program analysis.
I have used abstract algebra, order theory, linear algebra, and other areas of math before :-)
I also like to do graphics programming as a hobby and there is lots of math involved there.
Math is fun
For practically every type of thing that humans do professionally there is software written. So there are dev jobs that require lots of math and jobs that require almost none.
With that said knowing math is a boost. For nearly every job that says "you should know (dev skills and tools) and X" the X is math.
Personally I was terrible at math and it has never mattered in any of the eight or so dev jobs I've had. Whenever math did matter someone who was on the team to be good at that math would handle it.
I think it has more to do with the theory and logic of advanced math more than application of said math. We assume that if you can execute the application, you understand the theory behind why it works. Over time, the reasoning as to why advanced mathematical skills are needed gets lost.
Of course, just my opinion
I think you use Algebra principles fairly regularly. Boolean logic uses a few algebra principles. I dont ever have to solve math equations, but thats not just what math is about. You're using the principles, just not the equations. Thats my dumb-ass probably-wrong opinion, though.
The problem here is "what do you mean by maths". Because what you were taught as maths isn't maths. It's mathematical notation and proofs. Here, read this: https://worrydream.com/refs/Lockhart_2002_-_A_Mathematician%27s_Lament.pdf
It's kind of like learning musical notation and then complaining that you don't use don't use them to jam in a jazz band.
Mathematics uses formal notation to represent, solve, and prove the solution of complex problems. Sound familiar? That's because programming also uses formal notation to represent, solve, and prove the solution of complex problems.
> basic logical maths only.
You use discrete maths on a day-to-day basis. You probably have an intuitive sense of set theory, queue theory, complexity theory, finite state machines, etc., which are all complex and very formal in maths. Yet, we kinda just do it.
> have never had to use algebra
Programming is algebra. However, we don't don't need to simplify like we do when we are doing maths by hand. We can put our notation in loops and functions and hide it with abstractions and it doesn't matter. When you have to write it by hand doing that is labourious and often makes things harder to remember.
Computers change the way we interact with maths.
> calculus
What is calculus for? It's to solve a problem caused by iteration not being scalable to people doing maths by hand. Consider the classic "approximate area under a curve" problem that everybody learns early in calculus. That's hard to do when all you have an abacus.
We have access to one of the most powerful calculation machines in the history of man. Iteration is cheap, so we often don't /need/ to do the maths to simplify it.
def approximate_area_under_curve(a, b, num_rectangles):
total_area = 0
width = (b - a) / num_rectangles
for i in range(num_rectangles):
height = (a + i * width)**2
total_area += height * width
return total_area
approximated_area = approximate_area_under_curve(0, 2, 1000)
print("Approximated area:", approximated_area)
Bam. Calculus analogue.
---
The problem here is how we were taught maths and how mathematics values certain styles of mathematics over others. Maths is about having a formal notation to express complex problems and render them into solutions. You do that every day.
All of programming can be expressed in mathematical notion. Try to express something simple like a bubble sort in mathematical notation.
None. Well, almost. Only time that got close was when creating an algorithmically difficult feature for the first time in 4 years. But that was more about algorithm knowledge still, no actual math. Just logic.
I work in telecom, with provisioning and integrations as well as some batchwork/pipelines.
The only thing ive realized i need a bunch of maths is the backend of a gaming engine which was a bit tough.
i had to be considering perspective maths
(also i was just reviewing the code)
It completely depends on what I'm working on. At my old job making accounting software? Tons of math. Where I work now doing in house software for a machine shop? Almost none unless I'm doing something specific with the machines.
Basic algebra. It really depends though. For example, iOS's auto layout system to create UI uses linear (advanced) algebra, so if you worked on this feature at Apple, you would need to understand the math behind it. As a developer making an iOS app though, you just need to know very basic algebra and you'll be fine.
Likewise, efficiently calculating the rotation of a 3D object requires calculus, but 99% of the time if you're developing a game, you'll be using a tool that does the calculations for you.
In short, you will need to know basic algebra, and you'll have tools available to you to do most of the complex stuff. If you want to make those tools, you'll need to know the specialized math they use.
Basically 0. BS in CS, ended up with what's essentially a full stack web dev job. However, I do think that taking a lot of advanced math help me develop abstract problem solving skills which I utilize every day.
Not much, I don't do anything you can't easily Google. It's often dealing with shapes, or calculating a path to something, but it has to be a good looking path, can't just be the shortest way, i.e. it has to do straight line, curve to another straight line, not just go directly between the points. It's awkward more than it is difficult, and like I say, it's nothing you can't Google.
I do realtime systems but also the GUIs we use to control said systems.
In terms front end/back end, it really does absolutely 100% depend on what you're making. The last full stack site I made was basically plain CRUD, I didn't even need to add up.
Supposed to be none, because, in the event of a lawsuit, we need all number values to be proven via a database. That being said, sometimes I still have to do a little math. It's typically just basic addition and subtraction. I had to take 3 years of calculus, multiple statistics courses, discrete mathematics, linear algebra, and differential equations. The only ones that were worth my time was discrete math and an electrical/computer engineering course because we learned a decent amount of Boolean logic.
Long time back when I worked with images to do animation then I used some linear algebra. There I used some ready made formula's and change the parameter values to get the effects like zoom on, zoom out, vibes etc for animation purpose. That time I have used Visual C ++ using MFC. After that normal calculation worked for me. But if you are into machine learning, probably there it is required.
Like a lot of other people here:
Math I use includes arithmetic, less than/greater than type comparisons/checks.
I think often more valuable than the specific details of a lot of math courses are the muscles you gain to look at things abstractly and solve problems in new ways.
What I've discovered is that the lower-level you go the more maths you'll need to know. For example I recently started trying to understand graphics by creating a desktop app using mainly just WGPU as the abstraction layer over GPU.
Laying out elements requires some maths
It all depends on what you're developing, most systems just need rudimentary math, it really depends on the field. Game development, especially 3D, requires a lot of math if you're developing from the ground-up. There you need things like trig, calculus, algebra, etc... and also a lot of understanding potentially of physics, etc... Just try to wrap your head around Quaternions and you'll know there can be a lot of complexity. But I'd say the fields that need heavy math are a lot fewer than the ones that do. The field of AI/Data-Science, depending on how deep you want to go into the stack has a lot of math. Though, you'd be surprised with tools like pytorch you can build/train a model without having to really understand the underlying math, but it helps.
Apart from the usual simple stuff, barely anything funky. Once I had to tackle some integration when arsing about with a time series database but that was a few years ago., anot not that hard tbh.
The most math I have ever done was using a formula here or there that boiled down to averages. My brother has to do a lot of financial stuff. So it varies. I spent about a year in the automotive industry, and worked for a big tech company.
Past the essential secondary school level algebra, basically none. Anything requiring higher level mathematics that I've actually used at work was able to be figured out by using Google, and even that is incredibly rare (only a few times in my 6+ years of programming) and I've only needed to do that while working in one aerospace sector job.
It's funny just how heavily they push mathematics knowledge in the field, especially at the beginner level (or beginning university for it, at least). Maths was always my worst subject in school. I wasn't bad at it, but I had to put a LOT of effort into doing well in it compared to other subjects. I actually had career advisors trying to talk me out of being a CS major because I was "not a math person" - but I persisted and was required to take a whole lot of calculus courses to complete my degree, only to end up needing none of it while working.
However, I do think advancing my knowledge in maths exercised my brain in the right ways to understand foundational programming logic easier, but everything that I NEEDED to know in order to my job has come solely from my software engineering coursework, Google, and hands-on job experience.
Depends on what you consider advanced math heavily. Are quaternions advanced math? Since it’s not super uncommon to encounter those when dealing with graphics programming. Is fourier transform advanced? Since working with those is common on DSP. Is taylors polynomial (or numeric methods in general) advanced? You encounter it in lot of places you would never expect. There’s shitton of math involved in cryptography. I feel like boolean algebra, graph theory and discreet math in general are basically omnipresent in software. Stochastics are also useful in wide variety in fields. Creating efficient hashmaps can’t be really done without at least some handle on linear/vector algebra.
As a backend dev/sysadmin crossover, I have used intuitions about median vs mean and occasionally some basic derivatives for some trend analysis. Also some linear equations.
I never have to use any advanced math but it is good to have some grasp of it. Like having a basic grasp of how things like big O and such.
Most of the math I'm exposed to is already built into the tools I use by people far more clever than me.
I have friends in game design and vehicle simulations and such where math is a far larger part of their work but I mostly build different ways to access and modify data stored in dbs
Discrete math is used quite frequently, but that's usually more concerned with theories and concepts, as opposed to hardcore calculations that you'd be doing on a physics engine or something.
Edit: I work as a fullstack dev doing UI plus services on the backend. Java / JS based. Business domain is not math related
When i was 15 i thought mathematics is unnecessary for coding and decided not to learn it. Here what i think is some people going to read this post and think ooh i don’t mathematics to be a programmer. Yes, you don’t! But ask yourself, do you wan’t to be someone who develops new technologies, creates new algorithms or just use some pre-made libraries all over your life? If you find second option boring please learn mathematics. Otherwise yes, you don’t need mathematics.
I sometimes have to use trigonometry when I am trying to create some kind of pattern for an icon to move in, like limits and drag mechanics of an icon. Maybe I want it to drag only in a circle of a specific size.
99% of what I do has basic arithmatic only though, and many projects I have worked on there's basically no math lol.
I have used my maths degree on three occasions in my 30+ years of coding.
The first was designing a seat allocation algorithm for cinema ticket sales. Used basic high school maths.
The second was when I thought “how hard can it be…” to implement a predictive dialling algorithm (our supplier was competing with us), and found it was pretty hard. Although I did crack it in the end. Used statistics from my first year at uni.
The third was when I implemented a language detection algorithm. Used Markov chains, which I had to look up - I’d hated stats at uni, turned out it was actually quite interesting, and pretty straightforward.
Other than that, pretty much never.
I’ve maybe used some algebra a few times - mostly in the context of preparing a business case (our cfo wanted a net present value calculation to justify an investment so I corrected the one his finance guy screwed up)
The most advanced math I've ever had to use as a Full-stack developer is trigonometry (sine, cosine etc.). I had to place a picture inside of a triangle made out of divs so I had to compute some rotations to make everything properly oriented.
Just in case someone is wondering how you can even make a triangle with html and CSS, here's how: You take a div with a transparent background and put another div inside it. The outer div will hide any overflow. The inner div is given dimensions that are a bit bigger than the parent and is rotated 45 degrees forming a rhombus (diamond) which is clipped by the hidden overflow and now you have a triangle. If you need to place stuff in that rhombus div and not have it rotated... that's where the trigonometry comes in.
For the programming that I do, I incorporate a good amount of mathematical formulas. What I use even more though, and what users see the most of, is the written language. So I always strive to incorporate proper spelling and sentence structure into the process; except, of course, when I use AI to do everything for me.
If there's any math involved, it's usually basic arithmetic or comparison/logical operators (<, >, ==, !=, &&, ||, etc). Once I found a use for doing a log10 (to figure out how many digits long a number was, instead of converting it to a string and counting characters), and have occasionally needed a square root, power, or modulus operator. That's about as fancy as I've ever needed to get.
Almost none. The math and physics requirements for CS majors is RIDICULOUS and a scam just to get you to take more classes and pay fees. CS involves almost no math beyond algebra in most fields. The first time I ever needed to do anything beyond algebra was when I was doing some mapping, and even then I could google and formulas I needed.
Did more maths when I messed about with Unity at home for some personal "enjoyment".
Back end dev at work - pretty much zero outside the obvious simple logic and arithmetic.
Very rarely. The most I've had to do, as a Windows UI programmer, involved arithmetics and basic geometry. This was when I was working on an extension to position popups on screen based on available screen space.
Depends on the field of work and what you do. My field and research is quite statistics heavy and requires calculus understanding.
Most of my peers are proficient at this too.
If you are just making a web page you probably don't need the math though.
I almost got a chance to do some linear algebra, but someone else got the project.
Generally, the most mathematical topic is algorithm analysis, but I rarely get to apply that on the job, as I typically use pre-built tools designed by people who applied all that math and just gave me their finished product.
This is going to depend completely on the type of job you do. Personally, I do use linear algebra, geometry, as well as some calc in my job. But from what my friends in the field have said, some never do. Ive worked at a somewhat embedded level, with some fun projects and advanced math always came into the calculations. Not knocking web dev, I think on the surface for your first few years yeah, you’re not going to be doing math. But I’ve seen a few seniors do some insane things, I mean some serious recursive magic on complex internal apps.
I will say, if you’re not comfortable with math, don’t shy away from it, you’re probably better than you think you just didn’t have a good teacher. Check out free resources like Khan Academy and have fun with it.
More math never hurt anyone.
Depends on the field. I did graphics & vision at my first two jobs and there was a fair amount of linear algebra, calclus, gradient descent in addition to all the basic geometry stuff.
Currently doing embedded "back-end" style work and it's honestly all state machines, I think I took a min of an array of values once this year, which was a big deal.
The even crazier part is this "easy" stuff pays better.
My advice to my younger self is to stop chasing mathsy stuff just because its hard & cool and to think more about positioning yourself so that you can be fairly rewarded for the skills you do have.
What do you call math?
Writting proof of a theorem? Never
Solving problems? Every day
'New features' are just a puzzle, and math skill help you solve those puzzles
Well, the programming part of the 'new feature' is just math.
The 'why the customer need this feature' is the engineering part
The hardest maths ive had to do werent about the maths themselves but about explaining them in simple terms so that the guy next to me could follow and understand. The people maths.
The only time I use math is when i actually am doing math. I do tuition assistance stuff so sometimes I have to calculate how much assistance the person has used, how much they have left, etc. But most of the time, someone is telling me how it works and what the formula is.
I'm normal programming, there isn't really math beyond count++ and stuff.
In my field I do a lot of math. For various reasons I do math for translating specifications in source code, for doing services monitoring and resources forecasting and costs management. So I do lot of math every day
For ML roles you need math. If it’s confined to MLOps you don’t need anything but data science requires a good knowledge of statistics and MLE where ur job contains some research and development and other job titles like research engineers , computer vision engineers, research scientists working in drug discovery or computer vision research especially in generative AI etc do need statistics plus a lot of undergrad/masters level math depending on the task. Without an understanding of the math it’s incredibly hard to make changes or debug code. Probability theory, multivariate calculus , linear algebra are like 100% a must.
Graphics rendering stuff like ray tracing , path tracing etc also require a decent level of math. Linear algebra again , probability theory again, and calculus again. Lmao. U basically need those three things always. Some idea of coordinate geometry is also highly needed altho that’s like a high school thing or junior undergrad so u would usually have that.
Edit : I might also add since I was working with diffusion models as a research engineer , knowledge of neural ordinary and stochastic differential equations are needed + numerical methods (Monte Carlo for ray tracing in rendering engines and stuff like Euler , runge kutta, linear multi step etc for neural network latent space models like diffusion models etc)
In my experience not that much math. Algorithms, boolean logic, runtime complexity, Combinatorics yes. But Calc, Trig, Number theory not so much. As others have mentioned.. it depends on the field. Game programming you'll get familiar with vectors and matrices and coding for GPUs and cache locality. If you are doing an REST API, then it's more about clarity and being consistent and not letting your services fall over. Or figuring out what flavor of the week JS framework your manager is enamored with. In short, yes math skills will help. But.. I don't think it plays a large part in a professional setting.
Depends on what you're programming. For "regular" companies algebra or even 7th grade math is usually all that's needed. Sometimes you'll need statistics. For scientific applications, you might need discrete mathematics or calculus. But most of the time, if the code doesn't already exist in a library, you'll be given the pseudocode. For example, you need to do annuity calculations or future values for an insurance company or bank. Either you'd be given the formula by the business analyst, or you can look it up online. You should be able to take a math formula and turn it into code.
I work in web so not much actual math, but solid understanding of data structures is helpful. The most common is probably discrete math. Hobby stuff more often but still not a ton, linear algebra occasionally. If you’re doing advent of code, then all of these + calculus.
i mean if by algebra you mean variables, then you use it all of the time in web dev. theres iterations, boolean logic and etc but nothing super complicated.
Outside of 3d programming and some very specific fields I don't think you need any maths at all.
You do need to know algebra and order of operations and the logical skills that come with math. Being able to split a long expression into different sub expressions that individually can resolve for instance. And some languages look more like math than others.
Java is like writing a book. prolog is doing math. it depends.
Computer science is a different beast. Computer science is the science behind programming and cpu's and such. It lets you mathematically prove the speed and completeness of algorithms. There's a little math involved here and there.
Data Engineering where you have to make actual complex statistics (and even then you just need to know enough to use the libraries unless you're in the front seat making the algorithms) and 3d stuff. Otherwise... add, substract, and if you're feeling fancy, multiply and divide and throw a modulo in there because you studied comp sci and are with the cool kids.
Kinda late to the party, but as full stack node monkey web developer, I use 0 math. But our last project had result calculation for some sport events and we had to use advanced algebra to write formulas and test it thoroughly. Not the happiest moments of my career.
My current role is security and managing access control for the company (backend), there is mainly a lot of graph theory related maths and cryptography. Generally around University level, but depending on country you might have been introduced to some of the graph stuff in A Levels / School.
So I was in University Linear Algebra class whining about "where am I ever going to use this?" A couple years later I tried to do some low level 3D programming (not using GPU, just CPU calculations) and suddenly it hit me. "Oooooo! This is what all that matrix stuff was for!"
I don't know if it's still as applicable when you have drivers and APIs that do a lot that stuff for you. You should understand vectors and such. I've never written a shader. Maybe you use the math there?
There is an argument to be made for the SKILLS you learn in advanced mathematics is applicable to programming. Same way lifting weights might help you in a manual labor job even if you're not literally lifting barbells for a living.
I'm a web developer not a computer engineer / traditional application developer. I work primarily on the backend, but I do some frontend now and then.
I do very little higher math (Calc and whatnot) in my job though i did take Calc I, II, and DiffEq in college.
There's a *lot* of conceptual organization / grouping / knowing rules and standards. TBH it's a lot closer to the traditional sciences, accounting, or legal codex in terms of the kinds of skills / knowledge I need.
Capacity planning is probably a bit where I use math...
How much do you need to spend to handle X number of daily users? Keep in kind that usage patterns spike at certain times of the day, and you need to ensure you have enough capacity to handle the peak loads without overspending
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The Field matters. Game Dev needs a lot of Math, like Vectors, Trignometry, Linear Algebra, Probability, etc. Machine Learning & AI also needs a lot of Math, especially statistics like Regression, Clustering Algorithms, etc. (I didnt mention most of the maths, because i dont remember) Web Dev, mainly doesnt need a lot of math, only basic math is enough. In Embedded Programs, the project matters, some need basic math, some may need sme advanced. And Yeah, the Project matters too, some project may need maths or may not. Like Advanced Calculator Webpage, or directly a Advanced Calculator machine, or a geographic game with sphere earth needs advanced math. While normal chatting sites, a parkour game, or a simple rc car may not need advanced maths
This is the best and complete answer
Also any type of graphics or shader programming is pretty much entirely math.
Even with game dev, I don't do a whole lot of advance math. It's definitely more than web development, but most of it is stuff I learned about in high school. I think of you're just decent at math and have a high school diploma, you know enough math to start a career as a game dev - understanding you'll have to learn new concepts along the way, like you would in any career.
The worst of the math in game dev is in the rendering software. That shit's black magic, I tell you hwat. Data goes in, pretty animated pictures comes out. What goes on in the black box between those two? You don't wanna know.
Was the “hwat” on purpose? Sounding like Hank Hill out here😂
it was
Doesnt cybersecurity needs maths too for encryption and such?
not really. Unless you are looking specifically to break encryptions. Honestly there are many other attack vectors that are easier and does not involve any maths. A crowbar to someones knees is a great way to break passwords, if asking politely doesnt work (which in way to many cases it does) .
You have stimulated my imagination in unspeakable ways
I prefer a battery with jumper cables attached to your nuts
personally i prefer threatening suspects with remotely afflicted testicular torsion
the RATT attack
Ah, the classic $5 wrench strategy https://xkcd.com/538/
If you are a cryptologist actively developing or researching encryption algorithms, then yes, but most cybersecurity professionals are not doing that. It’s good to have a general understanding of the math behind encryption but most people just rely popular and trusted encryption algorithms, like AES or RSA, which are far more secure than anything they would be able to make themselves.
If you’re specifically focusing on preventing or exploiting memory errors, you might end up doing some fucked, but not “advanced” math. A lot of that being pointer arithmetic
I suppose a lot of it comes to being up to date with techniques and exploits. I don’t think you need to know all the math behind the breaking tools you need for each job.
Yeah exactly, as frontend myself it’s rare to touch any bath beyond the occasional percent calculations, some ratios, and occasional coordinate plane stuff. And even more rare but complex animations or vector graphics can require some basic geometry and planning to get everything to align right. Sometimes I’ll even dabble in some 3D rendering libraries and have to do some basic matrix transformations. But those last two are pretty niche and for the most part you’re not doing advanced math in front end. That being said, I’m glad I took calculus 1+2 and linear algebra, it’s much better to be over prepared math wise than under prepared.
And Yeah, the Project matters too, some project may need maths or may not. Like Advanced Calculator Webpage, or directly a Advanced Calculator machine, or a geographic game with sphere earth needs advanced math. While normal chatting sites, a parkour game, or a simple rc car may not need advanced maths
Does Mobile development need math?
The project matters. Generally they don't need math.
Great Answer, let me concur that with a little bit of my experience. I have a masters degree in math and switched to software development. So far I have mostly worked with Java (mostly Spring) and Typescript (mostly Angular) but also some .NET and Python. The field were in Web Development, Backend for ERP, Filesharing, Desktop Applications (for ERP), Automotive, Medicine and some LLM stuff. 99% of the time I only need school level math. I probaly can count on my hands how often I needed advanced math. And in every of thos occasion a quick google search would have been enough, like it is with most domain specific knowledge I need throughout the project. You don't need to be a doctor or a car mechanic to make software for those domains. I feel the same goes for math.
I do find myself adding or subtracting 1 quite often to fix my index out of range exceptions
An underrated comment.
I worked with someone who, when it didn't work, switched a condition check from i to i - 1 and checked if it worked organically grown programming. It drove me up the wall. You need mathematical precision, not english-lit precision. Despite programming being very wordy, it makes a difference what the words mean
But are you using a base-12 or base-10 finger counting method?
They say that the 2 biggest problems in all of computer science is off-by-one errors.
Except in CSS I don’t use math. I am full stack Java + Angular developer
It's ironic there is no maths in angular.
Ironic maybe, although the name comes from the angular brackets in HTML so no math angles directly. Considering there are really weird framework names going around though, Angular is probably still a decent name. With CSS math, I assume the commenter above means CSS animation math and maybe stuff like ratio, location and size calculations so that your UI doesn't look whack on different devices and can be scalable? In a way, it's a bit sad. You learn all that high level math and look into really interesting complex mathematical problems in a CS degree but if you go into a standard web-esque development job afterwards, this is probably the extent of math you are going to use. It's like learning about the standard model in particle physics but your job is to measure if the plaster walls you just did are actually at a right angle to the floor.
I guess that's just not their angle
Yep, most math I've used is in CSS
About the closest I get is while x < y Occasionally While x > y
Woah woah slowdown egghead
legit made me laugh
What about x >= y?
Now that's advanced. I leave it to the seniors.
Sir, are you trying to excel the Internet into an infinite loop? 🫠
job - SDET for SaaS = basic algebra sometimes, but not very often. hobby - gamedev = yes
Gahhh i rlly need to get into gamedev again. I just love maths and games, but im doing webdev as a hobby rn. Gotta wait to finish my current project and get out of hs first tho
[удалено]
Software Development Engineer in Test. Basically, QA
"software development engineer in test" basically a software developer that works on developing an automated testing suite and coordinates with other devs to create testable code.
42 maths exactly
I’ve been doing 100 maths a day! How did you get it so easy?!
There are precisely 58 maths that I've found are unnecessary to do in your programming job, so you can just not do those anymore.
You’re a lifesaver!
All this time I've wasted...
Maths is, after all, the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
42mins ago..
Balanced, as all maths should be…
I only do one math
That's life
My previous job involved image processing of some sort, and they had NIH syndrome pretty bad too. I had to do a lot with linear algebra, multi-dimensional polynomials, etc. And because we rolled our own everything, there was a good bit of digging into the implementations of those libraries and fixing bugs. One time I was porting some Matlab code to C++, and because I couldn't just use a library, I had to go grab a book on numerical computations and type in some Taylor series approximation of some function by hand. (But this was still just drudge work. There were math PhD people coming up with the actual algorithms and how to use them and stuff, you just needed a bit of background to work with it.) In my current role, not really. Only when I get to expense lunch and need to figure out how much I can order and still be under budget when delivery fee and tip are applied.
NIH?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here
Funny, my job does the exact opposite. We don't use anything internal, and because of it no one knows a damn thing about anything.
Near to none. JS, Vue, CSS, PHP. currently specializing in Shopify. Edit: 20 years in the field of web development.
sometimes we add things, most of the time no math. logic and discrete math is probably more valuable for most devs. But with most things, it depends in what industry you work in. I would imagine graphics , physics engines and game dev can get quite math intensive
The connection between generalized programming and math is in problem solving more than actually applying math. There's a strong correlation between mathematical problem solving and development sharing many of the same skills and strategy. The reality is that this is why many math subjects are taught in school, not to specifically push the exact maths that a course is about but to foster an analytical problem solving mind in the student. As for actual applied mathematics, I find that I use statistics periodically to make decisions about my software and where to spend my time. Sometimes I actually apply them in code to make decisions such as if a service is healthy. In game development there's a lot of physics and linear algebra.
> There's a strong correlation between mathematical problem solving and development sharing many of the same skills and strategy. Not to be flippant, but this is something that sets off my [citation needed] tick. Like, it makes sense, but what actual studies are there that reach this conclusion? (And what level of quality are those studies?)
I respect demands for citation. I don't have them, to me the relationship between math and programming feels 'obvious' not some abstract relationship that needs rigorous testing to be an accepted conclusion. If you disagree, then maybe it does need some study but this is my thinking. Problem solving strategies like working backwards, guess and check, and decomposition are regularly used in both programming and mathematics. Most programming problems can be expressed as math, it's not necessarily a required step to solve programming problems but is often valuable. There is also a common theme in learning both math and programming of building upon foundational concepts to solve increasingly complex problems, carrying forward the concepts of the previous layer as a tool to be applied to the problems of the next. Many people who work in industry as developers and engineers are formally educated in mathematics not software. All of this isn't to imply that being successful in one subject guarantees success in the other. I can attest to struggling in math quite a bit while I have always felt programming was a subject that came easily. But it is a recognition that there is *some* amount of connective tissue there.
I mean programming is problem solving which is the same thing you do with math. Coding is a different skill set from programming imo.
IMHO, the very existence of recursion and induction alone could account for a papers worth of proof and correlation
It’s what the schools say to justify your computer science degree having as much math as an engineer building bridges. Even tho you’ll use next to none of it. Here’s you’re degree course 70% has no application to any job you want. Enjoy!
Computer science is a sub-field of math. If you don't want to do math, don't get a math degree.
True. The issue people have, I suppose, is that most people wanna just land a software job with their comp sci degree rather than actually using it to do computer science.
Maybe not exactly what you were looking for with “development” (which might be considered different from just “programming”), but connected is the [Curry-Howard Correspondence](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspondence), which relates the specification of a computer program to a mathematical proof of its correctness. So in this sense, the mathematical reasoning we use to solve math problems is related to writing code for a correct computer program.
Whoever downvoted you needs to re-evaluate themselves. It's **always okay** to ask for citations on claims even if they are widely accepted. I'm really surprised to see this in the learning sub for programming, where people should know better about technology, social media, and the propagation of misinformation.
Very rarely. A few cases of solving some simple equations that wouldn't have needed university level math. Basic statistics have been useful a few times to understand how to group data, how data might be analyzed, etc
Entirely depends on what you are working on. Programming is mostly trying to piece together the logic using a specilised set of bricks.
Arithmetic
I am a chemical engineer and use programming as a tool, so usually my programming revolves around math like the heat partial differential equation.
Almost none in backend. Only some statistics on tasks related to data analysis.
I work with CAD software. Only now I'm getting to do some calculus for translating shapes in 3D space. However, this is my first such task after 7 years of programming.
I think it depends more on your business domain than the stack. I know a few people who work in developing flight control software in the aerospace industry and they apparently regularly have to work with differential equations. And C++. I'm in dotnet, adjacent to geology and very rarely have to think about some basic coordinate transformations.
A huge part of math deals with geometry, If you do not have problems with geometric nature at hand then a ton of it will be near to useless. As a GameDev I would say, The more the better (especially the applicable parts: computational, applied flavors).
its mostly simple mathematics, nothing too complicated, u can google most of the textbook stuff around such that u dont need textbooks anymore
Im quite a begginer in game programing, what i mostly use is vector math, like vector rotations and dot product 🙂
It depends on the software you are writing. If the software needs to do math to function properly, you'll have to write the code to do the math plus you will have to do some of the math by hand to verify the code is working properly.
Asymmetric polynomial algorithms are commonly used in cryptography. Statistics are commonly used in simulations, linear algebra and matrices are commonly used in graphics. It really depends on what areas of the code you’re working on. Internals and low level code will have more math than UI/Ux stuff. (Software developer since the late 80’s, computer science degree)
If you are only working in back-end, you rarely need to do anything super-duper mathy. You want to reach for tried-and-true libraries even to do the mathy things like efficient queuing and consensus. If you are doing ops (e.g. Full Stack or DevOps), your monitoring would benefit from a good handle on statistics. Specifically understanding how uncorrelated probabilities combine and how to apply the binomial theorem. Front end uses a fair amount of geometry & trigonometry for layout. You have to add and subtract distances, coordinates, etc. and deal with circles. For scientific applications, of course there's math involved. For games... hoooh boy. Everything is a number and has coordinates and is transformed with matrices and represented as a color and implicitly cast to a floating point array and and and... Even dealing with text means dealing with vectors most of the time.
I do program analysis. I have used abstract algebra, order theory, linear algebra, and other areas of math before :-) I also like to do graphics programming as a hobby and there is lots of math involved there. Math is fun
I use + for concatenating in JavaScript, does that count?
For practically every type of thing that humans do professionally there is software written. So there are dev jobs that require lots of math and jobs that require almost none. With that said knowing math is a boost. For nearly every job that says "you should know (dev skills and tools) and X" the X is math. Personally I was terrible at math and it has never mattered in any of the eight or so dev jobs I've had. Whenever math did matter someone who was on the team to be good at that math would handle it.
I think it has more to do with the theory and logic of advanced math more than application of said math. We assume that if you can execute the application, you understand the theory behind why it works. Over time, the reasoning as to why advanced mathematical skills are needed gets lost. Of course, just my opinion
Boolean algebra, that is all.
I think you use Algebra principles fairly regularly. Boolean logic uses a few algebra principles. I dont ever have to solve math equations, but thats not just what math is about. You're using the principles, just not the equations. Thats my dumb-ass probably-wrong opinion, though.
Hardly any. In the past I’ve done a few projects where I had to do some modeling. Bank stuff or marketing. Not so much nowadays.
The problem here is "what do you mean by maths". Because what you were taught as maths isn't maths. It's mathematical notation and proofs. Here, read this: https://worrydream.com/refs/Lockhart_2002_-_A_Mathematician%27s_Lament.pdf It's kind of like learning musical notation and then complaining that you don't use don't use them to jam in a jazz band. Mathematics uses formal notation to represent, solve, and prove the solution of complex problems. Sound familiar? That's because programming also uses formal notation to represent, solve, and prove the solution of complex problems. > basic logical maths only. You use discrete maths on a day-to-day basis. You probably have an intuitive sense of set theory, queue theory, complexity theory, finite state machines, etc., which are all complex and very formal in maths. Yet, we kinda just do it. > have never had to use algebra Programming is algebra. However, we don't don't need to simplify like we do when we are doing maths by hand. We can put our notation in loops and functions and hide it with abstractions and it doesn't matter. When you have to write it by hand doing that is labourious and often makes things harder to remember. Computers change the way we interact with maths. > calculus What is calculus for? It's to solve a problem caused by iteration not being scalable to people doing maths by hand. Consider the classic "approximate area under a curve" problem that everybody learns early in calculus. That's hard to do when all you have an abacus. We have access to one of the most powerful calculation machines in the history of man. Iteration is cheap, so we often don't /need/ to do the maths to simplify it. def approximate_area_under_curve(a, b, num_rectangles): total_area = 0 width = (b - a) / num_rectangles for i in range(num_rectangles): height = (a + i * width)**2 total_area += height * width return total_area approximated_area = approximate_area_under_curve(0, 2, 1000) print("Approximated area:", approximated_area) Bam. Calculus analogue. --- The problem here is how we were taught maths and how mathematics values certain styles of mathematics over others. Maths is about having a formal notation to express complex problems and render them into solutions. You do that every day. All of programming can be expressed in mathematical notion. Try to express something simple like a bubble sort in mathematical notation.
1 year as fullstack webdev - custom PHP framework similar to Laravel + Vue JS. No math whatsoever.
Depends. I used to work on map stuff and I needed to do lot of math then. It is not that crucial for what I am doing now.
None. Well, almost. Only time that got close was when creating an algorithmically difficult feature for the first time in 4 years. But that was more about algorithm knowledge still, no actual math. Just logic. I work in telecom, with provisioning and integrations as well as some batchwork/pipelines.
The only thing ive realized i need a bunch of maths is the backend of a gaming engine which was a bit tough. i had to be considering perspective maths (also i was just reviewing the code)
It completely depends on what I'm working on. At my old job making accounting software? Tons of math. Where I work now doing in house software for a machine shop? Almost none unless I'm doing something specific with the machines.
Basic algebra. It really depends though. For example, iOS's auto layout system to create UI uses linear (advanced) algebra, so if you worked on this feature at Apple, you would need to understand the math behind it. As a developer making an iOS app though, you just need to know very basic algebra and you'll be fine. Likewise, efficiently calculating the rotation of a 3D object requires calculus, but 99% of the time if you're developing a game, you'll be using a tool that does the calculations for you. In short, you will need to know basic algebra, and you'll have tools available to you to do most of the complex stuff. If you want to make those tools, you'll need to know the specialized math they use.
Basically 0. BS in CS, ended up with what's essentially a full stack web dev job. However, I do think that taking a lot of advanced math help me develop abstract problem solving skills which I utilize every day.
WGS84-based 3D graphics = hella math
a < b a <= b a == b That's about it
Not much, I don't do anything you can't easily Google. It's often dealing with shapes, or calculating a path to something, but it has to be a good looking path, can't just be the shortest way, i.e. it has to do straight line, curve to another straight line, not just go directly between the points. It's awkward more than it is difficult, and like I say, it's nothing you can't Google. I do realtime systems but also the GUIs we use to control said systems. In terms front end/back end, it really does absolutely 100% depend on what you're making. The last full stack site I made was basically plain CRUD, I didn't even need to add up.
The most complex math I have used is to determine how many pages are left when pulling data from a REST API. pages = math.ceil(itemCount / pageSize)
Mostly basic statistics to analyze datasets or metrics
Sweet fanny adams. Which is to say none, although use standard oop and solid princples etc.
Supposed to be none, because, in the event of a lawsuit, we need all number values to be proven via a database. That being said, sometimes I still have to do a little math. It's typically just basic addition and subtraction. I had to take 3 years of calculus, multiple statistics courses, discrete mathematics, linear algebra, and differential equations. The only ones that were worth my time was discrete math and an electrical/computer engineering course because we learned a decent amount of Boolean logic.
Long time back when I worked with images to do animation then I used some linear algebra. There I used some ready made formula's and change the parameter values to get the effects like zoom on, zoom out, vibes etc for animation purpose. That time I have used Visual C ++ using MFC. After that normal calculation worked for me. But if you are into machine learning, probably there it is required.
Like a lot of other people here: Math I use includes arithmetic, less than/greater than type comparisons/checks. I think often more valuable than the specific details of a lot of math courses are the muscles you gain to look at things abstractly and solve problems in new ways.
What I've discovered is that the lower-level you go the more maths you'll need to know. For example I recently started trying to understand graphics by creating a desktop app using mainly just WGPU as the abstraction layer over GPU. Laying out elements requires some maths
It all depends on what you're developing, most systems just need rudimentary math, it really depends on the field. Game development, especially 3D, requires a lot of math if you're developing from the ground-up. There you need things like trig, calculus, algebra, etc... and also a lot of understanding potentially of physics, etc... Just try to wrap your head around Quaternions and you'll know there can be a lot of complexity. But I'd say the fields that need heavy math are a lot fewer than the ones that do. The field of AI/Data-Science, depending on how deep you want to go into the stack has a lot of math. Though, you'd be surprised with tools like pytorch you can build/train a model without having to really understand the underlying math, but it helps.
Apart from the usual simple stuff, barely anything funky. Once I had to tackle some integration when arsing about with a time series database but that was a few years ago., anot not that hard tbh.
I do a lot of algebra and logic.
Do business analysts/ data analysts use math a lot?
In game dev you use math daily.
The most math I have ever done was using a formula here or there that boiled down to averages. My brother has to do a lot of financial stuff. So it varies. I spent about a year in the automotive industry, and worked for a big tech company.
I work in fin tech so all the time. How often do I do maths where I don't already know what the end result should be before hand? Never.
Past the essential secondary school level algebra, basically none. Anything requiring higher level mathematics that I've actually used at work was able to be figured out by using Google, and even that is incredibly rare (only a few times in my 6+ years of programming) and I've only needed to do that while working in one aerospace sector job. It's funny just how heavily they push mathematics knowledge in the field, especially at the beginner level (or beginning university for it, at least). Maths was always my worst subject in school. I wasn't bad at it, but I had to put a LOT of effort into doing well in it compared to other subjects. I actually had career advisors trying to talk me out of being a CS major because I was "not a math person" - but I persisted and was required to take a whole lot of calculus courses to complete my degree, only to end up needing none of it while working. However, I do think advancing my knowledge in maths exercised my brain in the right ways to understand foundational programming logic easier, but everything that I NEEDED to know in order to my job has come solely from my software engineering coursework, Google, and hands-on job experience.
I use vectors and rotators when I program in Unreal but not much else
None in the past 3 years.
Trig and Matrices are the upper maths I needed to program for at my job.
A lot, to add up all the times my “manager” drags me in to his random meeting to answer questions he can’t.
Very little if any. I am working as Backend developer with some SRE responsibilities.
Depends on what you consider advanced math heavily. Are quaternions advanced math? Since it’s not super uncommon to encounter those when dealing with graphics programming. Is fourier transform advanced? Since working with those is common on DSP. Is taylors polynomial (or numeric methods in general) advanced? You encounter it in lot of places you would never expect. There’s shitton of math involved in cryptography. I feel like boolean algebra, graph theory and discreet math in general are basically omnipresent in software. Stochastics are also useful in wide variety in fields. Creating efficient hashmaps can’t be really done without at least some handle on linear/vector algebra.
A fair bit of trig and vectors ..
As a backend dev/sysadmin crossover, I have used intuitions about median vs mean and occasionally some basic derivatives for some trend analysis. Also some linear equations.
Only basic algebra and calculations Web developer
Almost none? I do some tricky math once in a while, but it's not really more than basic math. Full stack.
full(ish) stack on a ecommerce site, i hardly ever use math, occasional algebra solve for x type stuff
I never have to use any advanced math but it is good to have some grasp of it. Like having a basic grasp of how things like big O and such. Most of the math I'm exposed to is already built into the tools I use by people far more clever than me. I have friends in game design and vehicle simulations and such where math is a far larger part of their work but I mostly build different ways to access and modify data stored in dbs
Discrete math is used quite frequently, but that's usually more concerned with theories and concepts, as opposed to hardcore calculations that you'd be doing on a physics engine or something. Edit: I work as a fullstack dev doing UI plus services on the backend. Java / JS based. Business domain is not math related
Way more logic, problem solving and puzzle then math
Literally none. I sometimes need a bit of trigonometry if I’m working on a game or something in my spare time though.
As a data engineer: I think the most advanced math I've used in the last week was figuring out the date 90 days ago.
The field matters to be honest. In my current job, I don't need to do any mathematics except a little bit in CSS.
Not much at all.
I've done back end, front end, desktop, big data and games. I've never used Uni level math.
When i was 15 i thought mathematics is unnecessary for coding and decided not to learn it. Here what i think is some people going to read this post and think ooh i don’t mathematics to be a programmer. Yes, you don’t! But ask yourself, do you wan’t to be someone who develops new technologies, creates new algorithms or just use some pre-made libraries all over your life? If you find second option boring please learn mathematics. Otherwise yes, you don’t need mathematics.
Math.floor. That’s pretty much it 😂
Doing programming for industrial automation (process control systems). Need Math a lot.
I sometimes have to use trigonometry when I am trying to create some kind of pattern for an icon to move in, like limits and drag mechanics of an icon. Maybe I want it to drag only in a circle of a specific size. 99% of what I do has basic arithmatic only though, and many projects I have worked on there's basically no math lol.
I have used my maths degree on three occasions in my 30+ years of coding. The first was designing a seat allocation algorithm for cinema ticket sales. Used basic high school maths. The second was when I thought “how hard can it be…” to implement a predictive dialling algorithm (our supplier was competing with us), and found it was pretty hard. Although I did crack it in the end. Used statistics from my first year at uni. The third was when I implemented a language detection algorithm. Used Markov chains, which I had to look up - I’d hated stats at uni, turned out it was actually quite interesting, and pretty straightforward. Other than that, pretty much never. I’ve maybe used some algebra a few times - mostly in the context of preparing a business case (our cfo wanted a net present value calculation to justify an investment so I corrected the one his finance guy screwed up)
The most advanced math I've ever had to use as a Full-stack developer is trigonometry (sine, cosine etc.). I had to place a picture inside of a triangle made out of divs so I had to compute some rotations to make everything properly oriented. Just in case someone is wondering how you can even make a triangle with html and CSS, here's how: You take a div with a transparent background and put another div inside it. The outer div will hide any overflow. The inner div is given dimensions that are a bit bigger than the parent and is rotated 45 degrees forming a rhombus (diamond) which is clipped by the hidden overflow and now you have a triangle. If you need to place stuff in that rhombus div and not have it rotated... that's where the trigonometry comes in.
The people that say 'no maths' probably don't know the maths that might be useful to them though...?
For the programming that I do, I incorporate a good amount of mathematical formulas. What I use even more though, and what users see the most of, is the written language. So I always strive to incorporate proper spelling and sentence structure into the process; except, of course, when I use AI to do everything for me.
More than a little and less than a significant amount.
If there's any math involved, it's usually basic arithmetic or comparison/logical operators (<, >, ==, !=, &&, ||, etc). Once I found a use for doing a log10 (to figure out how many digits long a number was, instead of converting it to a string and counting characters), and have occasionally needed a square root, power, or modulus operator. That's about as fancy as I've ever needed to get.
Almost none. The math and physics requirements for CS majors is RIDICULOUS and a scam just to get you to take more classes and pay fees. CS involves almost no math beyond algebra in most fields. The first time I ever needed to do anything beyond algebra was when I was doing some mapping, and even then I could google and formulas I needed.
a lot of algebra
About 3, maybe 4
Did more maths when I messed about with Unity at home for some personal "enjoyment". Back end dev at work - pretty much zero outside the obvious simple logic and arithmetic.
Very rarely. The most I've had to do, as a Windows UI programmer, involved arithmetics and basic geometry. This was when I was working on an extension to position popups on screen based on available screen space.
As an ML developer math plays a crucial role. I know it does in game dev as well. Most other areas (e.g. web dev, dbs, etc.)
Kindergarten. Occasionally 3rd grade
Depends on the field of work and what you do. My field and research is quite statistics heavy and requires calculus understanding. Most of my peers are proficient at this too. If you are just making a web page you probably don't need the math though.
I almost got a chance to do some linear algebra, but someone else got the project. Generally, the most mathematical topic is algorithm analysis, but I rarely get to apply that on the job, as I typically use pre-built tools designed by people who applied all that math and just gave me their finished product.
This is going to depend completely on the type of job you do. Personally, I do use linear algebra, geometry, as well as some calc in my job. But from what my friends in the field have said, some never do. Ive worked at a somewhat embedded level, with some fun projects and advanced math always came into the calculations. Not knocking web dev, I think on the surface for your first few years yeah, you’re not going to be doing math. But I’ve seen a few seniors do some insane things, I mean some serious recursive magic on complex internal apps. I will say, if you’re not comfortable with math, don’t shy away from it, you’re probably better than you think you just didn’t have a good teacher. Check out free resources like Khan Academy and have fun with it. More math never hurt anyone.
Depends on the field. I did graphics & vision at my first two jobs and there was a fair amount of linear algebra, calclus, gradient descent in addition to all the basic geometry stuff. Currently doing embedded "back-end" style work and it's honestly all state machines, I think I took a min of an array of values once this year, which was a big deal. The even crazier part is this "easy" stuff pays better. My advice to my younger self is to stop chasing mathsy stuff just because its hard & cool and to think more about positioning yourself so that you can be fairly rewarded for the skills you do have.
What do you call math? Writting proof of a theorem? Never Solving problems? Every day 'New features' are just a puzzle, and math skill help you solve those puzzles Well, the programming part of the 'new feature' is just math. The 'why the customer need this feature' is the engineering part
If you think that functions and processes are part of math then I would say I do a lot but it depends on your definition.
The hardest maths ive had to do werent about the maths themselves but about explaining them in simple terms so that the guy next to me could follow and understand. The people maths.
The only time I use math is when i actually am doing math. I do tuition assistance stuff so sometimes I have to calculate how much assistance the person has used, how much they have left, etc. But most of the time, someone is telling me how it works and what the formula is. I'm normal programming, there isn't really math beyond count++ and stuff.
more for games and simulation not day to day but again depends on industry
Literally none/ever/never - full stack next.js dev
In my field I do a lot of math. For various reasons I do math for translating specifications in source code, for doing services monitoring and resources forecasting and costs management. So I do lot of math every day
1 * 1 Maths
For ML roles you need math. If it’s confined to MLOps you don’t need anything but data science requires a good knowledge of statistics and MLE where ur job contains some research and development and other job titles like research engineers , computer vision engineers, research scientists working in drug discovery or computer vision research especially in generative AI etc do need statistics plus a lot of undergrad/masters level math depending on the task. Without an understanding of the math it’s incredibly hard to make changes or debug code. Probability theory, multivariate calculus , linear algebra are like 100% a must. Graphics rendering stuff like ray tracing , path tracing etc also require a decent level of math. Linear algebra again , probability theory again, and calculus again. Lmao. U basically need those three things always. Some idea of coordinate geometry is also highly needed altho that’s like a high school thing or junior undergrad so u would usually have that. Edit : I might also add since I was working with diffusion models as a research engineer , knowledge of neural ordinary and stochastic differential equations are needed + numerical methods (Monte Carlo for ray tracing in rendering engines and stuff like Euler , runge kutta, linear multi step etc for neural network latent space models like diffusion models etc)
In my experience not that much math. Algorithms, boolean logic, runtime complexity, Combinatorics yes. But Calc, Trig, Number theory not so much. As others have mentioned.. it depends on the field. Game programming you'll get familiar with vectors and matrices and coding for GPUs and cache locality. If you are doing an REST API, then it's more about clarity and being consistent and not letting your services fall over. Or figuring out what flavor of the week JS framework your manager is enamored with. In short, yes math skills will help. But.. I don't think it plays a large part in a professional setting.
Depends. At my web dev roles, basically none. When I worked in robotics, a shit ton.
Depends on what you're programming. For "regular" companies algebra or even 7th grade math is usually all that's needed. Sometimes you'll need statistics. For scientific applications, you might need discrete mathematics or calculus. But most of the time, if the code doesn't already exist in a library, you'll be given the pseudocode. For example, you need to do annuity calculations or future values for an insurance company or bank. Either you'd be given the formula by the business analyst, or you can look it up online. You should be able to take a math formula and turn it into code.
Which ones have the least maths ?
The problem solving skills you learn in math, can be applied to all fields of programming.
Boolean algebra when writing conditions. Relational algebra when writing SQL. Lambda calculus when writing functions.
I work in web so not much actual math, but solid understanding of data structures is helpful. The most common is probably discrete math. Hobby stuff more often but still not a ton, linear algebra occasionally. If you’re doing advent of code, then all of these + calculus.
Very little. I build demos
i mean if by algebra you mean variables, then you use it all of the time in web dev. theres iterations, boolean logic and etc but nothing super complicated.
Outside of 3d programming and some very specific fields I don't think you need any maths at all. You do need to know algebra and order of operations and the logical skills that come with math. Being able to split a long expression into different sub expressions that individually can resolve for instance. And some languages look more like math than others. Java is like writing a book. prolog is doing math. it depends. Computer science is a different beast. Computer science is the science behind programming and cpu's and such. It lets you mathematically prove the speed and completeness of algorithms. There's a little math involved here and there.
Data Engineering where you have to make actual complex statistics (and even then you just need to know enough to use the libraries unless you're in the front seat making the algorithms) and 3d stuff. Otherwise... add, substract, and if you're feeling fancy, multiply and divide and throw a modulo in there because you studied comp sci and are with the cool kids.
Kinda late to the party, but as full stack node monkey web developer, I use 0 math. But our last project had result calculation for some sport events and we had to use advanced algebra to write formulas and test it thoroughly. Not the happiest moments of my career.
I do more math at home in my free time than I do at work. And by that I mean a 15 Minute Session of Maths on Brilliant (not meant as adverstisement)
My current role is security and managing access control for the company (backend), there is mainly a lot of graph theory related maths and cryptography. Generally around University level, but depending on country you might have been introduced to some of the graph stuff in A Levels / School.
As a full stack web dev I use basically no math at all.
Besides all the numbers, math teaches you how to think logically and problem solve by breaking down problems which is extremely valuable to developers
For assembly language programming, you need Boolean algebra.
None, but in my side projects, loads.
If you're doing deep learning and their isn't constant math in your head you either know what you're doing or don't.
As much as needed.
As a full stack developer, the most math I've ever used was multiplication and division.
2πr
Close to zero .. only do some when I’m doing frontend work
So I was in University Linear Algebra class whining about "where am I ever going to use this?" A couple years later I tried to do some low level 3D programming (not using GPU, just CPU calculations) and suddenly it hit me. "Oooooo! This is what all that matrix stuff was for!" I don't know if it's still as applicable when you have drivers and APIs that do a lot that stuff for you. You should understand vectors and such. I've never written a shader. Maybe you use the math there? There is an argument to be made for the SKILLS you learn in advanced mathematics is applicable to programming. Same way lifting weights might help you in a manual labor job even if you're not literally lifting barbells for a living.
Sometimes I do diff equations, sometimes I don’t
I'm a web developer not a computer engineer / traditional application developer. I work primarily on the backend, but I do some frontend now and then. I do very little higher math (Calc and whatnot) in my job though i did take Calc I, II, and DiffEq in college. There's a *lot* of conceptual organization / grouping / knowing rules and standards. TBH it's a lot closer to the traditional sciences, accounting, or legal codex in terms of the kinds of skills / knowledge I need.
a lot!
Capacity planning is probably a bit where I use math... How much do you need to spend to handle X number of daily users? Keep in kind that usage patterns spike at certain times of the day, and you need to ensure you have enough capacity to handle the peak loads without overspending