Ask HN: Programmers Who Want to Get Better at Math

i have my own syllabus kind of thing curated: https://geekodour.org/docs/updates/syllabi/#hb03-get-back-at...

i don't think my math problem is new. i remember after one summer vacation(we used to get one full month break in school during summers) after summer vacation i totally forgot how to do subtraction, i had difficulty subtracting 2 digit numbers. this was around 8th standard.

later this problem came up in other areas, i catch things pretty quickly but forget them faster! so the way i am currently approaching math and other problem solving is i keep in touch with everything very casually by doing minimal practice and this is good enough for me for now whenever i need to jump into more advanced stuff.

plus chatgpt/claude has been a lifesaver in this regard related to concepts but I don't think anything can beat the intuition that comes from practice. I've heard good things about math academy but idk if it'll be good for me as I don't like to do "math" on the computer and don't like quizzes much.

I recently went back to community college for Calculus; partly because I'm sick of being a CRUD developer, and partly because it's cheaper than therapy. One main issue I have with math education is that it seems like professors go out of their way to come up with contrived examples in order to demonstrate a concept, but they don't apply similar effort into coming up with pragmatic examples of how to USE the concept. (I was the "when will I ever use this?" kid). I think math exists to solve real problems, so we should give examples of solving real problems

Math classes are often constrained for time because their curricula are mandated by an accreditation institution rather than designed by education experts. I feel that math could be taught less mechanically and with more historical context for the concepts. I've heard that people retain information better when it's paired with a story, so I feel strongly that history should be taught side-by-side with math

I think I’m in your target audience. I’m a developer that studied Computer Information Systems instead of Computer Science to avoid the math classes.

I’ve often wondered if it was the material or how it was delivered that I struggled with. I seem to do better at math when there is a piece grounded in reality, like in physics or geometry. I can use that math to build a deck or calculate how fast an object is moving. Computer programming also falls into this category. I start to struggle when the math isn’t representing anything notable, and instead, just letters and relationships between them floating in space.

As a developer that values good naming and readability, I’m surprised that math uses single character variable names like x, y, h, or k, when it could be named what it is representing. I’m going to assume this is something that carried over from pen and paper, but maybe worth the extra writing when learning.

I have a long list of things I’d like to learn, such as speaking other languages and studying crafts outside of software development, but I do often consider going back to take another shot at math beyond intro Calculus.

Thanks for the resources and the goal of helping people like me. I’ll check them out.