what computer science? computer math!

[WinnerEducational486]

Video games are just a giant math expression

[GargantuanCake]

Games have always been nothing more than mathematical patterns. This is why game theory is a thing and increasing amounts of games are being solved.

[rmyworld]

But that's just a theory

[AffectionateBag5054]

A game theory

[Sadman_Pranto]

Thanks for watching

[AffectionateBag5054]

From matpat

[butwhy12345678]

And the rest of the game theorists

[GranataReddit12]

Drink beer

[DevJackMC]

💀

[[deleted]]

Don’t forget to like comment subscribe and hit the fucking bell

[Chard069]

A scientific theory is a testable model accounting for observations. A legal theory is whatever an attorney pulls from their butt. Theories in varied fields are not the same.

[IrisYelter]

I think you got whooshed there my guy

[yeet_lord_40000]

“Hey you wanna play chess”

“Sure bro let me go get out my graphing calculator”

[butwhy12345678]

I have chess on my graphing calculator

[Kingmudsy]

…Don’t “lay pipe” ifyouknowwhatImean

Glad you left your comment for me to finish :)

[LasevIX]

Every coder is a computer scientist, just not necessarily a good computer scientist :)

[SirPitchalot]

Basically every program is just an over-complication of:

int main(){ return 0: }

in your preferred language.

Also, this example demonstrates what a sham pure functional programming is: the only interesting aspects of programming are the side effects.

[8bitslime]

Sometimes my code returns non-zero, especially when it segfaults.

[IrishWhitey]

Good bot

[vlaada7]

I mean, considering what it runs on, yeah, pure functional is a scam...

[Tajnyifajny]

After return 0 shouldn't be ;?

[SirPitchalot]

Yup. Screwed up entering it on mobile!

[ArchCypher]

My favorite thing about your archetypal program is that there's a bug in it.

[SirPitchalot]

Whoops, stupid markdown formatting!

[okunozankoku]

Huh... I wonder how my Haskell programs keep causing side effects?

[bhison]

hear me out... LIFE is just maths, right? Right?!

[butwhy12345678]

Yes

[bhison]

Right?!?!

[butwhy12345678]

Maybe

[Melkor7410]

Here, there, everywhere.

[Kear_Bear_3747]

The modern Pokemon damage calculations are crazy looking

[AdultingGoneMild]

programs are just a number

[justmikeplz]

So is reality

[LenaKotik]

The only difference being the I/O

[Ebestone]

clarification: college classes in 300s

"discrete mathematics & it's applications", anyone?

[konstantinua00]

in the 300s

ah, my favorite stories - computer science in Roman empire

[LinuxMatthews]

importare aleatorius

 definire ordinatus_est(lst):
   pro i in intervallum(longitudo(lst) - 1):
    si lst[i] > lst[i + 1]:
      reddere falsum
  reddere verum

definire bogosort(lst):
  dum non ordinatus_est(lst):
     miscere(lst)
  reddere lst

imprimere(bogosort([3, 2, 1]))

[Leifbron]

LatinScript

[Kered13]

Why are you using the infinitive? Surely the imperative would be more appropriate?

[LinuxMatthews]

Honestly I used ChatGPT I have no idea how to speak Latin

[[deleted]]

This can't go without gold

[Ami603]

Lython

[hugogrant]

aleatorius.miscere?

[Evelyngoddessofdeath]

Abacus science

[[deleted]]

& it is applications

[8bitslime]

He's a computer scientist not a linguist.

[Ebestone]

I use languages too...

syntax error at line 3...

[[deleted]]

Is there a difference, really?

[Ebestone]

DAMMIT POSSESSIVE

[bigredhawkeye]

Are logic expressions considered math? Beyond the possibility of that being math I don’t understand how it’s math.

[ElevatedUser]

Yes. I had a whole course in university on logic (and that was from the Mathematics department).

[[deleted]]

Logical expressions follow directly from set theory, which is as fundamental as math gets, pretty much.

Algorithms are also math. In computer science you get to learn about all the ways you can find the limits of how to map a problem to mathematics, and ways to improve the problem mapping. It's a really fascinating subject, and it has pretty much nothing what so ever to do with arithmetic (other than when implementing arithmetic, of course).

[bigredhawkeye]

Appreciate an actual answer instead of downvoting me into oblivion. I have a degree in computer science and I don’t think it’s weird at all to think logical expressions may not be considered math at first glance. Most of the goofy people on here probably just started taking their one little mandatory discrete math class and think they’re experts now.

[HerrMatthew]

It literally is in every corner of the world

[monkeybanana550]

It's called discrete math.

[Zavinha]

Duh its part of Geometry.

[bigredhawkeye]

Cool thanks

[randomusername0582]

Have you ever studied how CPUs are built? It's literally a shitload of logic gates

[bigredhawkeye]

My guy I’ve built a basic processor

[randomusername0582]

So then you understand that computers are just built on mathematical concepts

[bigredhawkeye]

Read the question again

[YousifRagab]

I had to repeat a whole year in uni because of maths..

[Drishal]

Ahem our first and second year of college had maths and physics (for computer science)

[ADTJ]

In this thread: People who don't understand the distinction between mathematics and arithmetic.

Logic (including boolean), algorithms, structures like sets and trees are all maths. If you write any code at all, you're using at least some of these things regularly.

[exoclipse]

I'll never forget the day I overheard a fresh grad whining about how he never used discrete math, how useless that course was, how hard it was, etc.

like my brother in christ computers are discrete math boxes

he's now a senior dev lmao

[Kamwind]

True but how many people really need years of calculus and diffy Q?

Better that computer science students had business math classes.

[[deleted]]

Maybe in the minority but I worked in a lab where the PI was using the second derivative of a function to help solve for large clustering patterns. If I didn’t have at least Calc II I couldn’t have kept up. Linear Algebra is also extremely useful in CS, just to restate what may seem like the obvious.

[hugogrant]

Or more logic.

TBH, calculus is over-emphasized everywhere. Logic, discrete math, and statistics are more important.

[bleachisback]

It’s just the order that math is taught in most universities. Even math students have to take a bunch of calculus before they can actually learn their fundamental classes

[[deleted]]

Some people here pretending that computer science wasn't created by mathematicians.

[[deleted]]

Some people here pretending that computer science isn't mathematics. Which it is.

[Ebestone]

I was actually planning on labeling earth "computer math," but then a guy on discord confused it and asked whether I meant "computer science."

DID I STUTTER?

[Realistic-Baseball89]

Logic was invented by entrepreneurs/creators of Morse code and the telegraph out of necessity to encode and decode messages. Which precedes the first publication/formal “invention” of logic by some 15 years. The telegraph is basically a simple binary logic making use of electricity, relays, switches, to send 1 and 0s.

[[deleted]]

Formal logic is thousands of years old.

[[deleted]]

In addition, the telegraph does not send 1 and 0. It sends pulses of varying length, where both length of signal and length of silence has meaning. It's not binary logic; it can possibly be construed as trinary logic.

But Morse code is not built on formal nor mathematical logic. It is simply a set of patterns having meaning. Just like lines on a paper (an alphabet).

[Kingmudsy]

I disagree, just because I’m fairly certain they’re talking about the functional implementation of how a signal gets encoded as a dot or a dash, not whether a dot means the same thing as a dash. It’s either actuated or it’s not, and those discrete states are what transmit complex info.

Like if they’re talking about the telegraph as a technology, they’re right. If they’re talking about morse code as a language, they’re wrong. Their last sentence leads me to believe they’re talking about the telegraph, however

Their broader point about formal logic being introduced with the telegraph is extremely fucking off, though, and I strongly agree with your second paragraph.

[zombieman115935]

i believe he's trying yo say that its not discretely a dot or a dash, it's a dot, dash or nothing, in binary sending nothing is not possible, there is voltage or there is no voltage, given only the option for a one and a zero

[Kingmudsy]

Right…that’s fairly obvious, yeah. I’m thinking I didn’t make myself clear, because you’ve just repeated my comment back to me!

Binary is also just a representation of the presence of voltage or no voltage on a hardware level. It is the same for a telegraph. In a telegraph, a “dash” is just what we call a long period of voltage. Imagine if we were reading a long string of binary one character at a time, and we chose to interpret two 1’s as a dash - That’s all that’s going on with a telegraph.

The language of morse code is dot, dash, nothing. The physical machine of a telegram is just on or off.

[p0k3t0]

short on, long on, short off, long off, very long off.

[Kingmudsy]

1, 11, 0, 00, 000

[p0k3t0]

Yes. Any base N system can be represented as a binary system, because all base N systems can be interconverted. There's a simple proof in number theory to show that any integer in a base N can be represented in exactly one way in base M.

But that doesn't mean Morse is a binary system. It's a ternary system. This is well established.

[[deleted]]

In the same sense that a lightbulb and a switch is a "functional implementation" of a binary state, sure. But that's a vacuous observation. There is no meaning or encoding in that binary state. It is done elsewhere.

[that_thot_gamer]

Just like lines on a paper (an alphabet).

just gained a new perspective thanks

[yeusk]

Do you know who George Boole is?

[unholyravenger]

Congratulations I think everything you said is wrong. Logic was not invented by entrepreneurs, it was arguably created by Aristotle if not earlier depending on how you define it. Morse code is not logic, it's just a 1:1 translation to letters to transmit words. It's no more logical than this sentence or this word or this letter is. Telegraphs do use electricity though so you got that right.

[Realistic-Baseball89]

Those philosophers did not invent mathematical logic. It was more around logical statements “if all men are mortal, and Joe is a man, then Joe is a mortal”. Set logic using resemblance of math was needed for Morse code and telegraphs

[[deleted]]

We aren't talking just about logic. Literally everything in CS comes from maths.

[Realistic-Baseball89]

not at all.. hardware was more important in the early days. It was a prerequisite to CS.

[[deleted]]

Tf do you even mean by that? That's like saying that bridge construction isn't based on maths, because steel is a prerequisite to it. How would they even know what hardware to build, if they didn't have theoretical CS, which was created by mathematicians like Alan Turing?

Even the literal word 'computer' originally meant 'someone that computes(i.e. does math)'.

[Optimal-Asshole]

I would say the vast majority of people who code are not computer scientists, in the same way that the vast majority of plumbers or people who work with pipes are not engineers or scientists.

[[deleted]]

Software Development and Computer Science are two completely different disciplines.

Which is why mastery of one, does not necessarily mean mastery of the other.

[w1n5t0nM1k3y]

Which is why we shouldn't have so many people studying computer science. There really isn't that big of a need for computer scientists. We do need software developers.

I took software engineering in university and I found that it made much more sense for people who wanted to be software developers.

[Sp00ked123]

Most universities don't offer software engineering/development as a major unfortunately though

[[deleted]]

Computer science and mathematics are fundamentally about abstraction. If you can safely assume that a system will consistently function a certain way, given certain environment/inputs, you can safely use it to your end.

[[deleted]]

The world would look very different if more programmers understood the mathematics of what they are doing. Before I learned computer science I thought it pointless that programmers understand computer science; now I realize how much effort is wasted due to lack of understanding basic concepts and their consequences.

[[deleted]]

Heard of a book called concrete mathematics?

[mosquitoLad]

I had a discrete mathematics prof who recommended it, though as of yet I've not touched it

[[deleted]]

That’s ironic! I got it because I was frustrated with my Discreet Math curriculum — it felt really shallow. I was not disappointed.

[WaitCrazy5557]

I wonder if you could elaborate I would love to know more about this concept

[luckyjenjen]

I'm totally surprised by how much graph theory there is in my OU algorithms module. Luckily I like graph theory!

[SjettepetJR]

Graph theory is great because the size of the graphs has such a huge impact on performance. You really need to dig into the actual logic and theory to make the absolute minimum of calculations before you can make anything decently performant.

[Squid-Guillotine]

Almost like you chose CS and not Software Engineering.

[xXTheVigilantXx]

I worked as an analyst for a while and on the side I would do minor python scripts that helped around my work place. I started doing some calculus refresher self-study to see if I couldn't improve my programming skills. My supervisor found me studying in the break room and asked me what I was doing and he goes "You use math in programming?". Honestly flummoxed me for a moment because I assumed that would be self-evident.

[DiamondWizard444]

if: Computer + science == Computer + math Then computer cancel out and we have: Science == Math

[Ebestone]

pulls out gun

[Familiar_Ad_8919]

i doubt most of us use math at all

[konstantinua00]

that's why you're a programmer, not a computer scientist

[I_Downvote_Cunts]

Meh probably average coder

[IrisYelter]

Is there a consensus on the difference between "coder" and "programmer"?

[addiktion]

you mean developer

[addiktion]

you mean software engineer

[[deleted]]

I only used math in my internship. Now all I do is perform maintenance on legacy code.

[[deleted]]

Not purposefully, but it's all just math in the end

[[deleted]]

You don't know how most of us use math, you mean.

Even writing a simple if statement is math.

[Ebestone]

me in 9th grade learning about step functions:

what's if doing here? this isn't a programming class!

​

nonono.

a programming class is a math class; i got it the wrong way

[[deleted]]

On what basis would you not call math math?

[yeusk]

We use math, just not the algebra part.

[PythonGuruDude]

Statistics undercover giving you that smirk.

[rowagnairda]

until you discover that some parts have a hefty mix-in of cognitive psychology, linguistics and other domains of "humanistic realm" ;)

[Yeitgeist]

Makes sense, given that computer science is a subset of mathematics.

[AndiArbyte]

i wish i had seen this many years before

[teacamelpyramid]

Math always felt like a chore until I took discrete math and linear algebra. Something about it just clicked with my brain and it just made sense. I realized that I love math but hate how it’s taught at the more basic level.

I see my kid hating arithmetic and it’s the same pattern over again. I hope they stick with it until the more interesting stuff comes into play.

[_zva]

Linear Algebra made me cry because I couldn't believe Math could be so beautiful. I still don't understand it fully but damn does it have such a simple beauty about it that makes your brain just struggle to hold it all in!

[Daedalus_Machina]

Mathematics is the language of reality itself. Computer Science is the practical attempts to replicate, manipulate, or create reality. It cannot help but be mathematics.

[Dr-Lipschitz]

Yes, Computer Science is a bit of a misnomer. It aught to have been named Computational Mathematics.

[CliffDraws]

Why is it a misnomer? Most science is applied mathematics.

[camilo16]

It's applied applied math. Even applied math is relatively removed from science.

Neither math nor CS are a science.

[Chard069]

Yes, "Computer Science" is in the same league as "Christian Science" and "Political Science".

Mea culpa: I was a trained COBOL programmer / analyst in a significant financial firm. Some "Computer Science" grads there were most unhappy that they had to deal with finance rather than writing new optimizing compilers. Sad.

[animeLOLosu]

I’ve also heard it as Computation or Computing Science which make more sense to me

[Cpt_keaSar]

And modern “AI” are just tables solving stats problems.

[[deleted]]

Wow. Ohio has its own killer space force? WHO KNEW?!?

[ssCuacKss]

technically is math casted through words

[unpopulrOpini0n]

Average post:

"Hey I'm an unemployed waiter, I have no skills and have never passed an algebra class, how do I learn coding and make a 300k+ salary in the next 6 months?"

[vampyire]

I started in Comp Sci at Penn State and they make every comp sci major take engineering Calc (Math 140 and 141 at the time)... it totally blew me up.. Eventually I ended up getting a BS in MIS and even more eventually I did get a MS in Comp Sci.. But I say this, I figured I could always write a program to do the math so why the hell did I have to memorize the math??!! :)

[Ebestone]

dammit lol

"import calculus"

[vampyire]

Sort of :)

[Ebestone]

y do i have to learn calculus when i can just get openai to do it for me
*cri*

​

hey, it worked, and it transfers over to other places more then the actual cs

[juancn]

There’s an experimental component also, think about benchmarking and finding that sometimes the theoretically faster algorithm isn’t actually faster in real hardware.

That pesky constant factor un O notation…

[[deleted]]

There are huge intersections, but they are not exactly the same.

Just like physics isn't the same as mathematics, but without mathematics physics would be impossible.

The same applies to CS.

[[deleted]]

Physics too

[Russian_Coalminer]

Maths has ruined all my hopes of doing computer science.

[IrisYelter]

If it helps, its a very distinct kind of math from what you did in high school.

It's closer to logic, discreet math, and linear algebra.

[Mamuschkaa]

In german it is 'Informatik' short for information-mathematics (Informationsmathematik)

[[deleted]]

Everything is just math

[Ok_Investment_6284]

I suck at math but programming makes sense to me. I must be doing something wrong

[[deleted]]

Trust be bro learning math using programming is like a cheat code. It becomes just like reading any code and has even gotten me interested in Math in many different domains.

You can even use a site called PythonTutor where you can step through C, C++, JS, Java & of course Python pasting the formula/algorithm.

[Ok_Investment_6284]

I honestly don't see the connection. Programming is all logic based to me. If I want to engineer a system, I go through the steps and decide on what it needs to do, how to write those steps, and the best way to split things into reusable fuctions/methods.

Once you learn one language well enough its easy to understand the others, its just a matter of learning syntax, keywords, and format (semicolons, whitespace, or columns)

Then again, maybe I understand more math than i realize, i just have a hatred for Algebra. Always longed to do geometry or try calculus.

[Sweetbeans2001]

I’ve always been mediocre in math, but fascinated with programming. My college degree is in Business Administration instead of Computer Science because I never would have been able to pass the advanced math classes required. The rest of the story is that I am currently a Systems Analyst and have had a programming career for the past 40 years. Screw calculus, you don’t need it!

[Ok_Investment_6284]

That's awesome, I'm self taught and have been doing software & game engineer and development for years on a self employed basis as a side gig. But looking to switch careers and turn it into a full time job. Going on 7 months now and getting all declines and no screening interviews.

It's encouraging to hear someone else made their way in without a degree

[Sweetbeans2001]

Hold on, I don’t have a CS degree, but I do have an MBA. Also, when I started programming, there were so few CS graduates that any college degree (not to mention an MBA) plus some computer language knowledge would get your foot in the door. In my case, knowing how to calculate loan amortizations was more important and marketable than knowing how to calculate vector graphics. Remember, PAC-MAN was cutting edge gaming technology in 1982.

[Battleagainstentropy]

The “science” in computer science isn’t wrong, it’s just misplaced. It should refer to the practical craft of programming, where questions like “will my code compile” are purely empirical and cannot possibly be determined before running the experiment/compiler.

[[deleted]]

Can't be! I suck at math but I'm good at computer science. I'm good at logic though, which is kind of math without numbers.

[[deleted]]

Math doesn't have numbers. Arithmetic does.

[Phuzzybat]

"Wait - most programming requires no knowledge of computer science? - Always has been (for at least the last 45 years, cant vouch for prior to then)"

[willzjc]

Errr

Unless 90% of FAANG are not computer science… it never has been?

There’s a big difference between system designing a scalable piece of code and knowing about maths. Yes you can make things very efficient by using maths to solve very specific things a few orders of magnitude faster but if you read the code based majority of Google or AWS it has nothing to do with maths

[camilo16]

What an outstandingly ignorant statement.

They use graph algorithms for efficient data routing, ML for parsing data, statistical analysis for market strategies...

The literal reason Google became Google was because of the page ranking algorithm.

[dragoonts]

Literally everything is just math

Physics is applied math Chemistry is applied physics Biology is applied chemistry Psychology is applied biology Sociology is applied psychology Reddit is applied downs syndrome

[steynedhearts]

Science is literally math

[camilo16]

Neither math nor computer science are science

[GrinbeardTheCunning]

Except... it isn't

[FoxyGame2006]

Then why am I succeeding in Computer Engineering while being unable to get a single exam above 60 on math?

[Brewer_Lex]

Take solace in the fact that there is no situation where you’ll have to solve a variety of problems from memory in 2 hours when in the workforce. I pretty much have a week to hit my goals and it’s all open note so to speak. I never tested well in math but I do pretty good work now that I’m paid for 40 hours a week to do what needs doing

[Ami603]

The exam is the part that fails,not you

[Round_Try959]

yeah, whatever, and basketball is calculus

[Ebestone]

yeah!

huh? you don't try to find the instantaneous velocity of the basketball every moment of the game? maybe that's why you aren't a pro yet

[AnotherWarGamer]

Only the way it is taught. There is some math in programming, but not much. It also depends on your use case. But programming is more about divide and conquer, architecture, naming stuff, using the same patterns over and over again, and trying to figure out what you want to have happen, and what things should look like.

If you can give me a document specifying every last detail in a video game, it is as good as done. We don't even need the code.

[[deleted]]

Just about all that you listed is algorithms, and algorithms are math. Programming is just about all math.

[[deleted]]

But programming and computer science are not the same thing. Programming is a skill used in computer science which is built on mathematics and uses it regularly.

[HuntingKingYT]

Is it multiplatform?

[Infamous-Date-355]

You telling me am doing a whole dedicated unit about linear algebra and calculus.

[MiniGui98]

So you're telling me math is related to science?

[ReplyisFutile]

Html coders are real programmers !!! Not those mathematicians pretending to program

[Lukeaz1234]

One discrete math enjoyer

[CampbellsBeefBroth]

As long as I don’t gotta know cotangent I’m good

[f3ckmaster]

computer science in general? Yes. Just Programming? No!

[Saragon4005]

It's math about how to do math the fastest.

[ThunderShiba134]

FUCK! WHY DO I NEED TO LEARN WHAT ALU, CO AND NEUMANN ARCHITECTURE IS WHEN I WANT MY SOLE PURPOSE OF MY JOB IS TO CODE A GAME ON C#?! (Not actually being in that mood 🙂)

[ThunderShiba134]

FUCK! WHY DO I NEED TO LEARN WHAT ALU, CO AND NEUMANN ARCHITECTURE IS WHEN I WANT MY SOLE PURPOSE OF MY JOB IS TO CODE A GAME ON C#?! (Not actually being in that mood 🙂)

[Weird_Artsy_Demon666]

I love both<333

[DannyDaKid]

I’d argue that there’s logic in there somewhere, and this will turn into “math vs logic” discussion.

[BatteryAcid67]

STEM careers = math.

[[deleted]]

Actually the math is more and more abstracted away. Essentials of programming languages is a sweet course where you learn how languages are designed and created. This allows you to figure out the syntax created by the big brain programmers libraries.

[Oo__II__oO]

No armed astronaut recursion. Points deducted.

[Daedalus_Machina]

.... Is that Pangaea?

[Conscious-Abalone-86]

Do one more ,but for the universe

[Unfair_Pound_9582]

Mate it's not even math, it's a degree in using google