Programming is Math, apparently.

I consider the annual ICFP programming contest to be a real-world contest. 72 hours of time, any ressources you have at your hand – take a look at earlier contests, they’re all fun – http://www.icfpcontest.org/

Programming is more synonymous with ‘Managing complexity while getting figuring out how to accomplish specific goals or tasks and keeping the project nimble as the specifications invariably change in the middle of the project’. This is why a word-smith, such as yourself, is highly valued.

Can I get a:

bool bHighFiveResult = HighFiveFriend(Dan, Crista);
If (bHighFiveResult)
{
PlaySound("clap.wav");
Shout("That's what I'm talking about!");
}
else
{
Shout("Whoops, Missed!");
}


Very nice post, totally agree with your points. For a real programming contest, I would have students build a distributed architecture that does non-trivial data processing and presentation (e.g. some combination of a web frontend with a scalable data aggregation backend) in the first 48 hours and then have them adapt it to a different raw data format in the next 6 hours.

As someone who also loves words, and even more the concepts behind them, I hope you will reconsider your position.

You appear to have fallen into the trap of confusing the parts of fields which you are familiar with (mathematics and programming) with the entirety of those fields. Because there is not much apparent similarity between the parts you know, you are concluding that there can not be similarity between the parts you do not.

In the specific case of programming and mathematics, this error is very common, but no less of an error for all its currency.

Coding and arithmetic, while not clearly related, are both parts of larger conceptual structures which share deep and beautiful symmetries and are ultimately unified if you progress far enough. Programming and mathematics are actually two different ways of looking at the same thing.

Imagine you found a room containing a seemingly random assortment of things; a rock swinging on a string, a stone disk with a stick protruding from the center, a grid of squares drawn on a piece of paper, a leaky bucket, a candle & a ruler, a digital display, an analog clock…and then it hit you that these things weren’t unrelated at all. That sort of deeply satisfying insight is what you are dismissing when you say that programming isn’t mathematics.

— MarkusQ

So I really like the music example, because it brings out some key distinctions that may not be apparent in the case of programming.

First, the distinction between performance and composition. Programmers, like musicians, divide their time between two distinct activities, one fundamentally about design and the other about execution. In each field (in fact, in all branches of mathematics) initiates spend most of their time and effort on the execution aspects. This is likely unavoidable, since at least some mastery of execution is needed/assumed to make headway on design.

But it unfortunately obscures the relationships between the sub-disciplines. Playing a harp doesn’t feel anything like playing a flute. If we couldn’t hear the results (and process them through complex mental signal processing systems) even the notationally similar scoring wouldn’t be enough to convince us that they were at all related without years of study.

Sadly, we have no such innate perceptual augmentation for most branches of mathematics; we can’t see/hear how they relate until we pass through the performance stage and obtain a fair mastery of the design. All of the performance level skills share this property; the how-details of execution make it all but impossible to see the why-details of design.

Secondly, the subject mater of execution (notes, numbers, classes and methods, etc.) are generally only a small subset of the objects of interest in the field, but they loom large in the mind of the initiate until they seem to be the whole field. Mathematics has very little to do with numbers and calculations, though that part occupies most of the introductory curriculum, just as dealing with spit valves and dotted quarter notes do in music class.

But as much as I like the example, I must take issue with the conclusion you draw from it. Far from advocating a “reductionist approach” as you claim, I am saying the opposite: that real skill in a field relies on seeing past the reductionist details to the structure beyond.

Judging a pianist by their ability to solve arithmetic problems makes no more sense than judging them on their circular breathing skills, and I am not advocating that. But expecting great things of a composer who understood group theory, had an intuitive grasp of catastrophe theory, or had deep thoughts on the frame problem…those sorts of things seem to me quite reasonable.

Likewise, if all a programmer is expected to do is call other people’s APIs and fill in the blanks provided by a web framework, then no, they don’t need much math. But if they are to design the frameworks, define the API, or break new ground in other ways, yes, they will be doing mathematics, whether they realize it or not.

— MarkusQ

Barbie actually said “Math class is tough”. As it should be.

“if all a programmer is expected to do is call other people’s APIs and fill in the blanks provided by a web framework, then no, they don’t need much math. But if they are to design the frameworks, define the API, or break new ground in other ways, yes, they will be doing mathematics, whether they realize it or not.”

Was looking for a way to say this but that does it pretty well. While it’s just as bad or worse when people try to trivialize computer science or any other field to “just math” (kind of like: http://xkcd.com/793/), computer science and (perhaps to a lesser extent) programming are absolutely related to math, and while you may be able to find work that can be classified as programming that doesn’t really need math or have anything to do with, I think the deeper, more interesting problems in the field are very closely tied with math (but they are distinct from it, at least imo). Using a programming language that you’ve never seen before may not, at least initially, require much math, but something like designing or implementing a compiler for that language does.

I sort of feel like the lack or presence of math might be a good approximation at a dividing line between something like CS and IT.

Good rant. I ri-key.