Let me apply my life's experiences to these wonderful questions
and hopefully shed some light here.
Answer to question #1:
Do you need to be good in mathematics in order to program well?
In my humble opinion High School level math will hold
you in good stead. Of course YMMV depending on how well
your High School did in teaching you math and how good
you are at applying what you are taugh vs. you being
a good test taker.
Having said that I can think of some programming I did
in the past where knowing how to do interpolation and
extrapoltation held me in good stead. In fact I don't
belive I could have solved the problem without those
skills. (Had to do with RF measurement automation)
In other cases I can think of I had to work with
mathemetitians (sp?) extracting from them programming
requirements for a project. Without a base knowlege of
math I would have been lost.
As to question #2:
Are people who have no training in Computer Science disadvantaged in how far they can get in programming?
again a classic case of YMMV. I do not have any formal
college level training to speak of. Yet I can program
far better than a lot of my peers who are/were CS majors.
Ironically enough I did a stint as an adjunct professor
teaching CS majors how to survive in a Unix environment
as programmers.
Are some programming languages more "friendly" to learners who are not mathematically inclined and who received no formal training in Computer Science?
I think once you learn how to program in one language
learning the next one is just a matter of syntax. Of
course this opinion is coming from someone who can
program in
- C/C++
- Perl
- Z80 Assembler
- 680159 assembler
- 80868 assembler
- PIC assembler
- Pascal
- Fortran (and I'll forget I ever said that if someone
tries to make me program in it again!)
-
Pascal (same goes for this languge
- and I have distant memories of COBOL and PL1
I didn't list my repetoir of languages to brag but to make
the point that I learned those languages as I needed them
to accomplish a task building on the knowlege I have of
programming in general. Like I say it is just a matter
of learning a new syntax and applying a general programming
knowlege set and style.
Now.. if you were to ask me what languages I think I am
more productive the list would change somewhat.
Peter @ Berghold . Net
Sieze the cow! Bite the day!
Nobody expects the Perl inquisition!
Test the code? We don't need to test no stinkin' code!
All code posted here is as is where is unless otherwise stated.
Brewer of Belgian style Ales
