Let me clarify the misconception about programming. Your boss most likely know little to nothing about programming, even if he did, he most likely confused web dev programming for digital graphic programming.
To not being able to distinguish what programming is used for show lack of understand in the field despite being in the IT business.
First conception that programming requires strong math. This probably holds true if you are programming hardware that speaks directly with machine codes, but programming itself deals with series of logic not math at least not in modern time. What we do with programming defines whether or not we need to know math. If the objective is to code a form that accepts data and pass it onto the server, where is the math in that?
This misconception came from the dawn of video game business where math is literally a requirement to be a programming. A lot of times it requires deep understanding of physics and algerbra.
But we are in web dev and the math requirement is high school level. If your boss tells you that it requires math, ask him which part of the html requires it?
Second misconception is difference between logic and math. Math and programming requires logic, not programming requires math or vise versa. Why do your boss think like this? Because most people’s perception of programming is limited to math!!! We are trained since grade school to look at technology through a mathematical lense. We are trained to use the calculator if the problems gets too big which lead us to think technology requires math.
The only thing that holds true about your boss statement is that the dawn of programming started with math, from binary calculation to form a simple instruction, to calculators, to Photoshop. But we are past that point. We are able to program software’s without ever knowing how a pixel is calculated. We are now able to drive a car without ever knowing how engine works. And likewise, we can program without ever knowing math.
I will correct one thing that your boss said. To be a good programmer, you need to be good at proving logics. That is much harder than proving math.