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How Good at Math Does a Programmer Need to Be? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/programming

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I'm working my way to a CS degree and am currently slogging my way through an 8-week Trig course. I barely passed College Algebra and have another Algebra and two Calculus classes ahead of me.

How much of this will I need in a programming job? And, more importantly, if I suck at Math, should I just find another career path?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Depends on the industry and depth you want to go to, gamedev for example you can do without any, but all lower level custom graphics and physics are pretty calculus heavy.

Website dev can be entirely independent of math

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ya, in gamedev you just need triginometry, lerp, quaternions, matrix multiplications and basic 3D math and maybe some more.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Me opening rpgmaker to do some matrix multiplication

[–] refalo 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Depends entirely on your definition of "gamedev", IMO. If you're trying to write a platformer in basic C with no external libraries, you will absolutely need to use algebra/geometry/etc. and maybe even some more advanced things like physics/calculus depending on what features/effects you want to put in your game.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I would uh consider that pretty in deep gamedev, even lower than some shader code lmao - so yes you would need to know some math.

Cracking open Godot and using a bunch of premade assets hardly even requires programming, much less mathematical knowledge

[–] refalo 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Be that as it may, I personally wouldn't consider someone to be a very knowledgeable (on how games actually work) game developer if they didn't at least know how to use things like linear algebra to make a character run and jump naturally and such, even if they're not coding like that day to day and just using a higher level framework.

You don't have to agree with me, and I still respect your opinion either way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

I agree with you. Even if you never touch it, it's nice to know what the libraries you're calling are doing under the hood.

[–] GetOffMyLan -1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That's a really ridiculous example though. No one is doing that.

[–] refalo 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'm doing that. I know several others who have as well.

[–] GetOffMyLan 0 points 4 days ago

But when you are talking about professional games development that is a very specific thing they almost no one is doing.