Re: A Mathematician's Lament

On Jun 23, 2:03 pm, Jon Enslin <jens...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 23, 4:00 pm, Anthony Summers <summerstorm0...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:21:10 -0700 (PDT), Goro wrote...
Could you elaborate on what kind of programming he is interested in?
What he's worked on so far?  As i mentioned upstream, i feel that a
good math background is critical to being a good programmer.  I've
worked with too many poor programmers and in each case, when i talk to
them about some patterns and then discuss some math structure, i get
404 in the eyes...

I wouldn't ever want to tell someone they should advise a kid against
chasing what they think is their current goal, but I agree with the
above assessment 100%.  (To be fair, I haven't done a whole Hell of a
lot of coding in ages, but I think I'd have been lost without the kind
of thinking that seems to be associated with having a natural aptitude
for math... then again what coding I did was self-taught, so perhaps I
might have had an easier time without the math and in a classroom.)

See, this kind of baffles me.  He gets great scores in computer
programming classes taught by a math teacher.  He's even been
recommended for the AP class.  How can he be good at this but not
regular math?

Jon

And this is why i couch my statements from being absolutes. He may
have the proper aptitude for mathematics and he may have an aptitude
for TRUE mathematics, which is more about structure and relationships
than about X+y = meh. It could be that the math teachers are the
sort that are mentioned in TFA and they are drumming the interest of
the math out of him in the core math courses. It could be that the
computer programming classes correlate to the mathematics in a way
that makes sense to him. I'll hope for this to be true and then it
bodes well for his future in computer programming.

On the flip side, it could also be that the programming courses are
not particularly challenging and haven't gone to the really
mathematically based components yet? Do you know what language(s)
they are coding in or what they are doing? I once met a lady who told
me that her son was learning computer programming in high school. I
asked her what he was learning. She responded, "HTML."

And do you know what kind of computer programming your son is
interested in?

A side question: Has he had any experience/exposure to databases
(even MS Access?)?

-goro-

.

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