Hello everyone, I’m a newbie and I want to go into programming but the word “Software engineering” scared me because it might advance maths. Back in high school I was awful at mathematics till date I still struggle with some basic and advance mathematics like caculus differentiation, quadratic, simultaneous equation, and some basic maths like logarithm. Please I need advice from programmers If maths is prerequisite for software development. Thanks waiting for everyone input.
I’m not a “great software developer” but until now I’ve seen you can do awesome things without using a simple math operation, maybe sometimes you’ll need to struggle with a math operation but in mostly levels there aren’t required things such advanced maths. I’m soo bad in Maths too and I’m doing the curriculum without problems (recently even I programmed a little game and the only math operation that I need where a division here and a minus there)
Thank you I will reconsider that.
So, this depends what area of software engineering you’re thinking of. This article on codeaccadmey might be useful.
As the article says, for some types of software engineering like data science, or creating new programming languages—yes you do need an advanced understanding of maths.
In other forms of software engineering you need less maths.
However, logic is important for coding regardless of the amount and complexity of maths. Logic is problem solving and pattern recognition. Logic is learning how to construct your own code by putting together the different concepts you’ve learned.
Logic is important for maths, but also a skill on its own. It is one that can be learned, even if you do struggle with maths.
In short, it depends what software engineering you are doing. But you don’t need advanced maths for every kind programming. You do need logic.
Just to reiterate, you’re fine. Unless you are in a very specialized field, most programmers (especially web dev) never need to know much more than the math we did when we were 12 years old.
Personally, I would say that you need a good understanding of basic math like simple algebraic manipulation, basic number theory (primes, squares, factoring, etc.), things like rounding numbers - again, pretty basic stuff. If you understand that stuff, it should be easy to pick up the rest. Learning a little boolean algebra is good, but if you understand basic arithmetic algebra, then boolean is easy.
Beyond that, I think an interest in puzzles and logic games would be more beneficial.
I have never used calculus. I have never done a quadratic equation. I think I may have once or twice done a few very simple simultaneous equations. I used a logarithm once, but that may have been an algorithm challenge. To be hones, I think the hardest math (maybe up to a high school level) has been in algorithms challenges - sometimes they try to show off their cleverness with some “gotcha” math rule. But that doesn’t happen much in coding, unless you are in a few specific fields.
I know a lot of great coders that don’t love math. I know many that don’t know what differentiation is. I know more than a few that would be lost with quadratics and simultaneous equations. Don’t worry about it.
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