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I wish to meet all of the people who say "soil research is useless to programmers."
My client just called me and told me that their indicative beet cyst nematode research does not display the eggs per larva per 100 ml correctly.
Also, if I can create a report showing yearly infections of rostochiensis, pallida, or both.
Meloidogyne is going pretty well though.
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As a business programmer I don't use a lot of math in my code, but I do have to understand a lot of math so I can design the appropriate algorithms for the problems I'm solving.
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Years ago, in the 1980s, and in a land far, far away, New Jersey, I developed a radar display on a PC for the FAA. Those were the days of the '286 and they were s-l-o-w and floating point was an unavailable hardware option. In order to keep up and display the data in a circle, I had to re-derive the standard SIN, COS, and TAN functions to recognize 0 degrees as the positive Y-axis instead of the traditional positive X-axis.
Or, to put it succinctly, how well do you understand trigonometry and integer processing?
__________________
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now.
© 2009, Rex Hammock
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I also had to re-derive sin, cos and tan functions to properly apply a vectorial control in real time... multiple times for different projects  from simple "closest value in LUT" to "linear interpolation between adjacent values".
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I would never say math is useless, but when people find out I write software, a frequent reaction is, "Wow, you must be really good at math." I think I'm above average in numeracy, but I sort of maxed out at calculus, so no, I'm not really good at math, but this is a common misconception.
So I explain that, while developing some types of software requires very high math skills, other skills are more universal. For example, being able to anticipate how your users will use your software is very important regardless of the type of software.
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I ended up working for a bank, and they have some really weird calculation structures. Whenever anything more than basic maths was required I pointed them a the quants who live in that space. In 30+ years of building business solutions I never required any of the mentioned maths.
What the bloody hell have they got you doing and why?
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Motor control. If you want to have a brushless DC motor running you have to pilot 3 phases with adequate currents - and we can't use the standard 6 point drive because it is noisy.
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I wouldn't say "math is useless to programmers" - rather "math is of little significance to a large number of programmers, especially those doing line of business stuff and e-commerce. I have zero use for laplace transforms or matrices or trig. I have minimal use for even basic algebra 95% of the time.
Math is a tool - like all tools, it has jobs it's fit for and jobs it's less fit for.
------------------------------------------------
If you say that getting the money
is the most important thing
You will spend your life
completely wasting your time
You will be doing things
you don't like doing
In order to go on living
That is, to go on doing things
you don't like doing
Which is stupid.
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Surely not useless but I don't think it deserves the emphasis it has, when I needed FFTs I learnt them, I never had a need for Laplace so I don't know it, I remember some basic trigonometry and I never had a need for something remotely as "advanced" as what we did in school.
School taught me to learn, what I learnt is largely irrelevant to me now.
If I could go back and chose to not have some math classes, I would do it
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I need things much more advanced than what I did in school. From when I analyzed images in real time to find anomalies to when I wrote the algorithm to have a humanoid robot walk, up to now that I simply have to drive pumps and fans.
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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Yeah, sure, it's just that I don't think that since there are some programmers that make chemistry software we should all learn chemistry, same thing for maths or music for people that make DAWs.
I don't have your job  and if I did.. I would probably be of the same idea, I didn't learn CUDA at school, now I need it and learnt it, it would be absurd to think that school would have had to teach it to me. 
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Working in the engineering industry for 35 years I never trained formally in software or engineering but always had an interest in both even as a kid. 34 years ago I overheard my MD discussing not being able to get anyone to reprogram an inspection machine and I (stupidly?) volunteered to look at it. It was programmed by hand in binary codes which I had to decode by trial and error and a lot of intuition but got it going. I never looked back, since then my weekly routine regularly consists of 50% engineering, 50% software and 50% maths (See, I can do maths!) I consider myself as an engineer that can write software rather than a software engineer and, certainly for me, I couldn't do it without maths.
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Sorry, but I find the logic of math to be great when programming.
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Now imagine how much you'd bang your head if you never had exposure to those.
Knowledge is never lost, just dormant. You can rest assured if you didn't have any exposure, your life would be a lot harder now.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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I wouldn't have got the job at all 
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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At least it sounds as if you have one of the rare development jobs which is actually interesting.
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Meh, it's producing firmware for motors... with only a single application (maybe two). It's mostly engineering the system as to lower reaction times, improve thermal and power efficiency, reduce noise and EM emissions...
Not the most interesting job I held but its perks are elsewhere (i.e. twice the pay and a third of commute distance).
GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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And that's the reason I don't have a job like yours. 
My programming jobs have been all in the music industry, or now, banking. I use descrete maths and the occasional easy algebra.
Like golf, Calculus in all its forms are great spectator sport, but I've little interest in actually playing the game.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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I was once asked to do a chi-square analysis. I still don't know how to do that. Not part of statistics for physics So, I just computed averages, which were good enough to get the job done.
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Any developer who does not have a good grounding in Algebra will never go very far in their career...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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Riiiight, I didn't use any math in all the DSP code I wrote for embedded audio devices. Or for the IEEEish floating point package I wrote for an industrial controller language (looong time ago!). Yep, didn't need math for any of it.
About the only opinions from non-programmers I pay attention too are in regards to how an application looks and interacts with the user.
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I have long said that, while I took 32 hours of college math (calculus, differential equations, and matrix algebra), I've since recycled that part of my brain to store old movie dialogue.
Much more useful.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I will try to post it at noon UTC.
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A long tradition, I can see...
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