• hglman@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Its got to be a relatively small group who knows enough to understand loops and is also afraid of math symbols.

    • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Maybe not so small?

      I never encountered these math symbols but for loops are like step 3 in any programming language after variables and conditionals

      • stoneparchment@possumpat.io
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        1 year ago

        lol, like 2.5% of the USA are programmers and even if we say twice that number have experimented and taken programming classes, that’s like 1 in 20 people who would even have ever encountered a for loop. This nsf report says ~70% of highschoolers have taken Algebra 2 or a more advanced math course, which is when sum notation is usually introduced. I think 70% is a little greater than 5%!

        • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That’s interesting to hear; somehow my algebra 2 skipped sum notation (and it wasn’t remedially covered in subsequent math classes) but I’ve been writing code for decades now and seeing it in code totally explains the sum notation for me

        • kartoffelsaft@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Huh. When I took Calculus II in community college, the professor introduced sum notation and like 2/3 of the class was like “wow that’s cool I didn’t know about that”. I don’t remember ever being formally taught it before that but it still surprises be how few people where already familiar with it.

        • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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          1 year ago

          I was great at maths in school, was in all the advanced classes and I found it so fun it didn’t feel like work to me. I learned a lot of the notation, but because I didn’t study maths further, I became rusty. With programming, I never really learned it, I just kept coming into contact with it as part of my post university work (in science), and gradually, I picked up some basics. The coding basics I did get feel much more familiar to me than the maths concepts now, because I literally couldn’t avoid coming into contact with coding in my work.

          The maths they teach in school also is generally very pure maths, and that can make the concepts remain quite abstract. Matrices, for example, made way more intuitive sense to me when I used them as a scientist than when they were taught to me as a maths student.

    • Choco1ateCh1p@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I believe this group could be bigger than some may think. I, and the team I work with, work with for loops similar to these on a regular basis. And only one of us has a bachelor’s degree in math. The rest of us don’t really understand the math unless it is applied.

    • charlieb@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I never made it into algebra in grade school, my scores weren’t good enough. but I took a liking to software dev and the ability to create digitally. Self taught myself all the variables and flow controls and OOP, now been a professional developer for 15 years.

      However I still suck at math, and these fancy symbols still scare me probably because they were never properly explained. But yeah, I fit right in the mold you describe. Glad I have the computer to crunch the numbers for me.

    • karstin@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m in that group I think. I do like a liiitle bit of coding in some tiny specific progrqmming language in one piece of software that I use. I understand the basics but try to avoid having to do it. But while code is a little scary to me, math is much scarier lol