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Comment by jack9 | Hacker News Reader

Linear Algebra is almost worthless to most programmers. I challenge you to demonstrate otherwise. Of course it has use in specific industry. So what?

There's a lot of thinking that math is a fundamental part of software development. That was true when the problems were coming up with abstractions that required specific solutions. That hasn't been the focus of development, for decades. Welcome to the world of data processing and presentation (the vast majority of time and effort is in UI).

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> I challenge you to demonstrate otherwise.

graphics, machine learning, cryptography, data compression, optimization, physics, simulations, genetics, traffic flow analysis, economics, audio processing, control systems, vision...

Yes, but for math to be really important few of those are a developer doing e.g. cryptography, it's a cryptographer doing programming. I worked in one of those fields and it would be at least ten times the developers to people "doing math" and they where highly educated in that field.

Cryptographers are computer scientists/developers, though. If you want to do something "real," other than make pretty buttons, that is, you're going to have to do some math.

That's a list of concepts. None of that approaches proof.

Most business and web programmers would find it useless, perhaps, but if you're wanting to go into video games, simulation, physics, aerospace, robotics/internet of things (i.e. sensors), or the about to explode virtual reality field, you will most likely benefit quite a bit from linear algebra.

I've found it much more useful than my calculus classes, personally (although calculus is also useful to know for most of these industries).

Yes, those are specific industries, but that's quite a few specific industries. There's probably others that could benefit from it as well.

That's more because math is important to those fields though. If you're making e.g. a video game math is a very small part of the overall work. It's cool as a hobby if you can go "I know math and I know programming, therefor I can make this game like thing". But if you wanna work as a game programmer your better off focusing on that and figuring out whatever math you need along the way.

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