how hard is it to be a developer

[pixelbox]

do you have to be very good at math? i mean like a genius or is it like high school math?

 

[Neeyik]

Thread moved to a more suitable forum and no, just because it was about being a developer doesn't mean it was suitable for the Dev's board.

 

[Humus]

You don't need to be a genius, but you need to be fairly good at a subset of linear algebra. If you know your vectors and matrixes, you're probably in a fairly good shape. It's more important to have a good "feeling" for math and be good at spatial thinking, rather than being able to quote an assload of theorems or be able to derive mathematical relations. That stuff can be googled up if you need it anyway.

 

[DeanoC]

Well a games developer include the areas of art, design, QA, production and programming.

A little bit of maths is required to be a programmer (or producer to be honest...) but if you want to do rendering or physics, you will need a fair bit of applied maths.

I'm no genius, and don't have a degree in maths (though I have taken a few degree maths courses) and I'm considered to be one of the maths experts on the team (Andrew and Frank are far better at maths IMO). My limit is a bit of Lie group theory (handy for matrices), bit of graph and coding theory and reasonable linear algrebra and thats it. Of course there also the usual computation logic stuff that all programmers know (but thats not the kind of maths, most people think of).

Oh and I can't count... seriously lose my place if I have to count upto about 40...

 

[Diplo]

The most common mathematical operation you do in programming is adding 1 to a counter. If you can do that you are sorted

 

[RussSchultz]

The most common mathematical operation you do in programming is adding 1 to a counter. If you can do that you are sorted

Actually, you're simply incremented.

Sorting is more complex, sometimes mindboggling so.

 

[nutball]

Parallel programming is where it's at for the next gen of ... stuff.

 

[nutball]

Actually, you're simply incremented.

Sorting is more complex, sometimes mindboggling so.

If you insert in increment order you're sorted by definition

 

[Xenus]

Oh and you need to pay attention to nested loops and that some values are universal while some only work in that area. For basic java programming though you only need high school algebra. Can anybody tell me why a Comp. Sci. degree needs like 3 levels of Calculus and various other Math classes it seems a bit overboard.

 

[RussSchultz]

I always thought it was because most comp sci departments were part of the college of math.

 

[Xenus]

No mine's part of the arts and sciences so I have to become well rounded and take a bunch of useless liberal arts classes.

I get to revisit the fun of implicit differentian in my first college math course too.

 

[Richard]

More involved mathematics are required depending on your particular field, if you're doing lots of clever tricks in camera space watch out.

 

[nutball]

Can anybody tell me why a Comp. Sci. degree needs like 3 levels of Calculus and various other Math classes it seems a bit overboard.

If you don't know the answer, there's no point me telling you

More seriously, computing came out of mechanized maths, that's what it was invented for. The rest is (irrelevant) history.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

If you plan on developing applications for the real world you will definitely require a pretty damn good grasp of maths. While you don't need to be a genious, you do need to be able to do basic -> advanced univeristy level maths pretty well.

Real world applications include (but not limited to) medical, geographical, statistical modelling, etc...

Of course if you just want to create games or business apps then you wouldn't really need craploads of maths.

 

[RussSchultz]

*shrug* I write all things related to embedded operating systems and mp3 players, and my "maths" requirement is pretty low. The most complicated I've done recently was a 2d graphics library.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

There is some software allowing surgeons to see inside patients without even cutting them up.
There is also software that can translate geographical data into a 3D model.

Aren't those math intensive?

*shrug* I write all things related to embedded operating systems and mp3 players, and my "maths" requirement is pretty low. The most complicated I've done recently was a 2d graphics library.

 

[Jabbah]

There is some software allowing surgeons to see inside patients without even cutting them up.
There is also software that can translate geographical data into a 3D model.

Aren't those math intensive?

Depends what applications you are talking about. For the medical software are you talking about the scanners and the software that generates the 2D images or the software that will take the slices and build 3D volumes out of it and allow you to apply transfer functions to reveal relevant parts of the data set? The scanner software uses "hard math" but its pretty well detailed in research papers. The volume reconstruction is fairly simple requiring no more than a good A level in math and again there are some detailed papers for the advanced techniques.

I would say an important thing is to have a good enough understanding of math to be able to translate formulae into code. I think the derivations of the formulae are a less important skill for the average developer, being more the researchers domain.

 

[RussSchultz]

There is some software allowing surgeons to see inside patients without even cutting them up.
There is also software that can translate geographical data into a 3D model.

Aren't those math intensive?

Sure, but a blanket statement of "math is important to computer science in the real world" is mostly bunkus.

Most people don't touch an integral past college. I haven't done a laplace transform since my last final 13 years ago. Even Z-transforms are pretty rare, even though we do a lot of DSP work here.

Personally, I've seen that advanced math is important in maybe 5% of what I've done professionally...and what I've done hasn't been database programming or text processing.

So, YMMV.

 

[Diplo]

Russ is correct (gosh, don't hear me saying that often ). I'm awful at Maths and yet work as a programmer (albeit mostly on web-based applications that tend to be database driven). I never even did an 'A' level in Maths and I did my degree in English Literature. I just fell into programming almost by accident.

Of course there are programming jobs that require very good Maths skills but usually you just have to know how to translate algorithms that other people have come up with into code. One thing you find in programming is that generally whatever you are trying to do someone else will have probably already done it and you can adapt their code. It all depends, really. Programming encompasses a wide variety of different types of skills.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

I wouldn't say "genius" level of mathematics is necessary, but I'd have to say that one thing you can't afford is to be afraid of it. More often than not, you're not going to use any particularly complicated mathematics. You can solve some pretty major problems using only fundamental rules of arithmetic, but coming up with the appropriate arithmetic is where the challenge lies -- and it's one that rests more on your ability to *comprehend* how mathematical principles apply than it is about you knowing how to do a hell of a lot of complicated stuff. And people who think "oh, math is so hard..." are basically doomed. Just don't feel doomed if you can't handle tensor calculus.

Are there programming jobs that are math-heavy? Sure. They're not the status quo, though.