tbf all good programmers are good at math. Not classic arithmetic necessarily, but at the very least applied calculus. It's a crime how many people used a mathematical discipline every day, but don't think they're "good at math" because of how lazer focused the world is on algebra, geometry and trig as being all that "math" is.
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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Serious question; how does Calculus apply to programming? I’ve never understood.
PID control is the classic example, but at a far enough abstraction any looping algorithm can be argued to be an implementation of the concepts underpinning calculus. If you're ever doing any statistical analysis or anything in game design having to do with motion, those are both calculus too. Data science is pure calculus, ground up and injected into your eyeballs, and any string manipulation or Regex is going to be built on lambda calculus (though a very correct argument can be made that literally all computer science is built of lambda calculus so that might be cheating to include it)
Lambda calculus has no relation to calculus calculus, though.
Data science is pure calculus, ground up and injected into your eyeballs
Lol, I like that. I mean, there's more calculus-y things, but it's kind of unusual in that you can't really interpret the non-calculus aspects of a neural net.
Graphics programming is the most obvious one and it uses it plenty, but really any application that can be modeled as a series of discrete changes will mostly likely be using calculus.
Time series data is the most common form of this, where derivatives are the rate of change from one time step to the next and integrals are summing the changes across a range of time.
But it can even be more abstract than that. For example, there's a recent-ish paper on applying signal processing techniques (which use calculus themselves, btw) to databases for the purposes of achieving efficient incremental view maintenance: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.16684
The idea is that a database is a sequence of transactions that apply a set of changes to said database. Integrating gets you the current state of the database by applying all of the changes.
that can't be right. maybe they meant lambda calculus? programmers are definitely good at applied logic, graph theory, certain kinds of discrete math etc. but you're not whipping out integrals to write a backend.
Any function that relies on change over a domain is reliant on concepts that are fundementally calculus. Control systems, statistical analysis, data science, absolutely everything in networking that doesn't involve calling people on the phone to convince them to give you their password, that is all calculus.
Many things that work with time series data use calculus all the time. Both derivatives and integrals are very useful in that context: derivatives being the rate of change at some particular time step, and integrals being the sum of the changes across a range of time steps.
There's a pretty wide range of applications.
Computers are just big calculators so to program them you need calculus.
Lotta infinite sums in loops
A senior firmware engineer said to the group that we just have to integrate the acceleration of an IMU to get velocity. I said “plus a constant.” I was fired for it.
That sounds like it might be a gift in disguise.
Depends on the context. When my company proposes me to a client for work I am, but oddly during my yearly performance review I am just some smuck who programs.
I’m something of a scientist myself
If you want to know how computers work, do electrical engineering. If you want to know how electricity works, do physics. If you want to know how physics works, do mathematics. If you want to know how mathematics works, too bad, best you can do is think about the fact it works in philosophy.
If you want to know how philosophy works, do sociology...
It's kind of like a horseshoe with philosophy and math at the ends.
If a C- is enough to pass Analysis of Algorithms, then a Computer Science degree can make me a Computer Scientist. :P
You need C++ for computer science, though!
I mean, nowadays you need to be very smart and educated to google efficiently and avoid all the AI traps, missinformation, stackoverflow mods tripping, reading reddit threads on an issue with half the comments deleted because of the APIcalypse etc... sooo you could argue that you're somewhat of a scientist yourself
Be me, a computer scientist who still struggles with XOR.
Wait til you see XNAND
I literally have no idea what this picture means, and at this point I'm too afraid to ask.
The typical holder of a four-year degree from a decent university, whether it's in "computer science", "datalogy", "data science", or "informatics", learns about 3-5 programming languages at an introductory level and knows about programs, algorithms, data structures, and software engineering. Degrees usually require a bit of discrete maths too: sets, graphs, groups, and basic number theory. They do not necessarily know about computability theory: models & limits of computation; information theory: thresholds, tolerances, entropy, compression, machine learning; foundations for graphics, parsing, cryptography, or other essentials for the modern desktop.
For a taste of the difference, consider English WP's take on computability vs my recent rewrite of the esoteric-languages page, computable. Or compare WP's page on Conway's law to the nLab page which I wrote on Conway's law; it's kind of jaw-dropping that WP has the wrong quote for the law itself and gets the consequences wrong.
I meant the guy in the picture, but thanks anyway
Surely you must be a master of linear algebra and Euclidean geometry
IT stooge != science Sorry fellas.
I have been coding since I was 10 years old. I have a CS degree and have been in professional IT for like 30 years. Started as a developer but I’m primarily hardware and architecture now. I have never ever said I was a computer scientist. That just sounds weird.
Had a graduate Dev who did not have a fucking clue about anything computer related. How tf he passed his degree I have no idea.
Basic programming principles? No clue. Data structures? Nope.
We were once having a discussion about the limitations of transistors and dude's like "what's a transistor?" ~_~#
Tbh, as a dev knowledge of transistors is about as essential as knowledge about screws for a car driver.
It's common knowledge and in general maybe a little shameful to not know, but it's really not in any way relevant for the task at hand.
Maybe for dev knowledge, but computer science? The science of computers?
Well, computer science is not the science of computers, is it? It's about using computers (in the sense of programming them), not about making computers. Making computers is electrical engineering.
We all know how great we IT people are at naming things ;)
Informatics is a much better name imo
If you want someone to know about the physical properties of transistors, find an electrical engineer.
Ok, but he didn't know what a transistor is. Like I get not knowing the mechanics or chemistry of it, but to literally not know it or how it applies to a computer boggles my mind.
Could be a case of bad memory. Solved the exams and forgot everything in the next hour.
My ex boss describes himself as such. King of the dickheads.
good they escaped early
loops weird without the clevage
wow you have a degree I'm soooooo impressed
Nope, it means you're a Computer Engineer.
computer engineer refers to someone who engineers computer hardware. more like being a (digital) electrical engineer.
Yea I dont think people are catching the sarcasm of not having capital E Engineers in all countries.
I mean, I am applying various kinds of science but I'm not actually doing any science so I'm not thinking about myself as a scientist. What I do is solving problems - I'm an engineer.