I’ve always flunked at math; and knowing how intertwined programming is with math, I’m skeptical of my ability to learn how to code. Can someone be too dumb to learn programming? If it helps, I’m mostly interested in learning Common Lisp.
I think anyone can be too dumb for anything. Personally, there are many things that I feel like I am too dumb for. Specifically things that require artistic ability or emotional thinking. Even as a kid I find subjective topics completely baffling. I always loved math because I was either right or wrong, and I liked science because my hypothesis was some variation of right or wrong. Could I learn an instrument, sure, but by the time I get any good I could have gotten substantially better at something that clicks for me.
Don’t get me wrong, if you find it interesting and have passion for it, that could probably overcome what you are lacking with enough time.
Like with anything, you will not know if you are going to be good at it until you spend a lot of time trying and failing and learning. If you enjoy it, just keep doing it.
Math knowledge is not essential; but really useful in programming as you’re trying to make the computer do calculations of some sort.
Someone could definitely be too dumb to code though.
I failed math 3 years in a row in high school and I made plenty of minecraft clones using nothing but logic and basic algebra. Math isn’t as important to programming as people say, I still can’t do division or multiplication on paper, but in a program, I can make it do that for me.
Yes. Some people are too dumb to eat without someone’s help.
I’m a front-end dev. I play with CSS until it’s close enough to the design I can get someone to sign off on it. I write tests too, and that doesn’t take much. My tech lead is literally afraid of switch statements. I’ve had coworkers not understand for loops and reject MRs. I still prefer using if statements instead of X ? Y : Z.
I’m pretty dumb, and I make 120k USD writing code.
Sure it’s possible to be too dumb, but that’s Forrest Gump levels of dumb.
To be fair, the ternary operator can get messy.
Unless you want to go into advanced physics or math as a career, programming is not math heavy at all. Graphics programming uses a lot of math but it’s mostly vector math, matrix transformations and trigonometry.
You can definitely learn basic levels of programming without getting too deep into the math, enough to put together simple programs that can automate small tasks.
The issue is that math is incredibly important for enterprise level programming, particularly for optimization. Programs you write for yourself can be slow, inefficient beasts that hog way more resources than they need. If you wanted to write code as a job though, you’d need to be able to find the line between speed and accuracy, and that can require some complex math.
I suck at math and believe that if you can think critically and solve problems, you can program. It is possible to learn how to break down a mathematical formula into its components and have the computer compute. You can’t proof your work on your own at first, but there are tools that can.
Depending on what you’re doing, you may even learn the math as you go like I did with game dev and vector math. Like any skill, it takes practice.
80% of programming jobs will only require basic maths.
A lot of the time you’re glueing together libraries written by much smarter people haha
It’s more about logic than maths. People absolutely can find it too hard.
I know I am.
I’m starting to believe I am. Been at this for a year and I still don’t understand how to use methods like .filter() or .map() despite reading and practicing, it’s all just smashing the keyboard until it works. I know some other devs will come in and joke they do the same thing but no, I feel truly lost when trying to figure this out.
It took me a long time to really grok iterative methods like this, but once it clicks, you will absolutely know and feel like you have unlocked a new super power.
It starts with completely understanding that you are just passing functions as arguments, abs those functions are being invoked in a loop for each item in the collection. Once that is internalized, you learn the differences between filter, map, reduce, etc. The general differences boil down to: 1. How the iterator function changes the value being iterated over (most don’t) 2. What does the iterator function return (map and filter both return a new list, reduce returns the data structure being reduced into)
I would skip trying to understand reduce at first, though it’s the method you can implement all other such iterative functions with. The derivations like map and filter are just easier to start with.
And again, seriously, it took me like 2 years to completely internalize all of this, even after CS classes.
It will come in time, promise. I had a REALLY hard time understanding recursion until I started using it more
I am not particularly good at math myself, but I like to program stuff… If I am any good at it… decide for yourself: https://github.com/matejc?tab=repositories … anyway, if you have interest of doing something, stop the doubt, just do it.
Find something you want to create in Lisp then do it! You will face problems, but you will always find solutions online and that’s how you will learn and good at this. Anyone can learn I think, it’s a matter of motivation like everything else, and having a goal helps a lot.
No unless you’re terribly bad with basic algebra and discreet math. When people that interested with programming say they’re bad at math, they usually mean they’re bad with calculus.
