Is Math Needed for Programming?
Is Math Needed for Programming?

A lot of people who want to start learning programming are writing me and asking "Do we really need math to become a programmer?". This is why here we will clarify once and forever do we need math at all to become a programmer.

Is it the real question?

In 95% of cases the answer here will be "No". But actually it is not the question that person wanted to ask. What he wanted to ask is that he was not really good in math at school and he doesn't really understand math deeply. And he is asking if it is possible at all to become a developer without deep knowledge in math because he heard somewhere that it is required to become a programmer.

And here is a real test for you to check your math knowledge.

Math test

If you can solve this exercises it means that you really have enough knowledge to become a developer. And I'm not kidding here. In 95% of the cases this knowledge is enough for you to start learning programming. Because actually if we talk about programming nowadays it's not like programming 20 years ago. We are mostly talking about web development and mobile development and in this both cases math is not something that we use every day.

And I'm not saying that math is completely useless but I didn't use any math from the school in the last 12 years. Sure from time to time you will use some stuff from math, you will work with algorithms but the main point is that you don't need any specific knowledge for that. If you need some specific algorithm you can find it in internet check how it works and understand it fully.It's not like you need a degree in math to be a good programmer.

Not for everything

But it's only true for 95% job. There is still 5% where you need it. For example when you work on project like good maps you need math. Or maybe you build rendering engine, doing machine learning or blockchain. There you also need math.

Google maps

But even here the problem is that you need quite specific knowledge of math. And for sure not the math that you've learned in school.

So don't listen to the people who say that you can't become a developer if you don't know math. You can just learn it along the way while learning programming.

Also if you want to become a good developer you must understand how web works so make sure to check this post.